drone thermal

A Bird’s-Eye View of Yesterday’s Fire Yesterday, we showed you what the large brush and bamboo fire looked and sounded like from the ground. Today, we’re taking you above it. Thanks to the North Little Rock Police Department’s drone pilots, we’re able to get a bird’s-eye view of incidents like this. Their drones give our Incident Commanders valuable real-time intel about the size of the fire, where it’s moving, areas we may not be able to see from the ground, and where the greatest heat remains. The thermal footage is especially interesting. So what are you actually looking at? Thermal cameras don’t really “see temperature” as black, white, and gray. They detect infrared energy and translate those temperature differences into an image. In the white-hot setting shown here: • Bright white = the hottest areas • Gray = intermediate temperatures • Dark gray/black = cooler areas One important catch: the colors do not represent fixed temperatures. White doesn’t automatically mean 500°F, for example. The camera continually adjusts its scale based on the hottest and coolest objects in the scene. Depending on the camera and settings, the difference between black and white could represent anything from relatively small temperature changes to hundreds of degrees. That’s what makes the footage so useful. Even after flames become difficult to see from above, thermal imaging can reveal hot spots, burning material, and heat hidden beneath vegetation and debris that might otherwise be missed. And when you look at the bright white areas in this video, you can get a pretty good idea of just how much heat yesterday’s fire was producing. A big thank-you to our brothers and sisters in blue for continuing to provide another set of eyes in the sky when we need them.