Sheri Biggs Questions Orange County Fire Chief About Integrating Drones Into Wildfire Response

4/3/2025

During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Sheri Biggs (R-SC) questioned Kevin Fetterman, the Fire Division Chief at Orange County Fire Authority, about using drones to aid wildfire response.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you. I now recognize the gentlelady from South Carolina for her five minutes of questioning, Ms. Biggs.

00:10Thank you, Chairman Guess. I want to thank you for holding this hearing today,

00:16especially considering the recent wildfires that have impacted my own district.

00:22My thoughts and prayers are with the families and the first responders

00:26and the entire communities impacted by these fires.

00:31I have been on the ground alongside state and local leadership, and I want to be as helpful as possible.

00:38I have been inspired by the way our community has come together.

00:42That's the spirit of South Carolina, and that's something to be proud of.

00:47Earlier today, I received a message that so far in my district, 12,652 acres have burned with 30% containment,

00:59and that was a little earlier today.

01:02This is the second record-setting natural disaster that my constituents have faced in the last six months.

01:11The upstate is resilient, and it will rebuild.

01:15So my question is to Mr. Farrell.

01:18Can you describe the coordination between your organization, federal, and local entities

01:25as you engaged in the response to Hurricane Helene?

01:29And the second question on that is, what capabilities do you foresee drones being equipped

01:37within future disaster responses,

01:40and how might this expand the future missions of drones in emergency response situations?

01:50Thank you, Congresswoman.

01:53So the coordination is one where, especially in Region 4,

01:58we're very fortunate on the remote sensing side to have a collaborative collection plan.

02:04It's really a model that doesn't exist in any of the other regions currently.

02:09So our partnership with Region 4 stemmed out of work that's gone back about eight years with NOAA

02:16to assess flood mapping and monitoring missions through our NOAA cooperative,

02:20the Northern Gulf Institute, and our Geosystems Research Institute.

02:25The FEMA Region 4 took notice of the large UAS operations

02:30and reached out through that federal collaboration to begin investigating the opportunity

02:37for a large UAS to engage in these kinds of disasters,

02:41given the broad area type surveillance that we can be able to provide and that endurance.

02:46So we began doing blue sky exercises through Project Justice

02:51to really illustrate that integration into the FEMA operation.

02:56And so when a storm, especially around hurricanes,

03:03begins posing its threat to our region, the collaborative collection plan is put in place.

03:09The region coordinates with all of the stakeholders,

03:12including the state and local emergency management agencies, to understand what their needs are.

03:17FEMA will reach out to us, and then we will pre-position as best as possible to be able to respond.

03:24And as we get in, we, on daily calls, talk about areas and targets and interests for ingress, egress,

03:32damage assessment, search and rescue, and then we will get mission assigned and broadcast out.

03:38As we collect the information necessary, because we're doing this in a live fashion,

03:44we're actually doing it through a distributed teams call with our pilots,

03:48they can reassign us as needed while we're in the air.

03:52As far as capabilities in the future for this mission, I think that, you know,

03:57we had the conversation about autonomy.

03:59Autonomy is going to play a large role, whether that's thrown in the box

04:02or greater capabilities around sensors, greater capability around platforms,

04:08more ubiquitous type platforms in this type of disaster response.

04:13One of the things we're doing is doing assured safe training

04:16to actually train first responders in these kinds of missions,

04:19to understand the airspace management that exists and do the training for airspace managers,

04:24your air boss, if you will.

04:26And then what we also want to do is work with our state and locals

04:31to be able to enhance their preparedness and understand what the constructs are

04:36and what contracts and what kind of needs need to be in place so that,

04:40at least in Mississippi under our land grant mission,

04:43we can prepare our community for response from kind of a grassroots perspective.

04:49And I'm just going to finish up with Chief Fetterman.

04:52It's clear that drones will play a pivotal role in assisting disaster responses.

04:58What strategies have been used on the West Coast to integrate drones into wildfire responses,

05:05and how have they improved coordination between the federal, state, and local responders?

05:11Well, certainly creating situational awareness

05:16integrates information flow between local, state, and federal responders

05:20and certainly on incident management teams.

05:22So drones provide that increased situational awareness,

05:26and they're a great tool to utilize on those kinds of events.

05:29Certainly airspace de-confliction is a priority to us.

05:33Drones and helicopters can't operate in the same space and time.

05:36So we're looking forward to additional AI technology

05:41that will allow that to better manage the airspace.

05:44Thank you so much, and thank you all for being here today.

Sheri Biggs Questions Orange County Fire Chief About Integrating Drones Into Wildfire Response

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