Queen Creek debuts portable drone to help firefighters

Using drones for public safety isn’t new, but the Queen Creek Fire & Medical Department’s innovative take on the technology could provide help for its firefighters during various incidents.

Drone by first responder programs generally travel from a stationary base to an incident that could be miles away. Queen Creek revamped the traditional deployment system and implemented a mobile base that allows for more efficient use of drones.

This mobility is achieved by mounting a remote piloted unmanned aircraft system, dubbed “Dorothy,” on a sliding tray in the battalion chief’s vehicle, which is then deployed when the unit arrives at major calls. The drones sent out through Dorothy provide real-time aerial footage to incident commanders before crews even arrive on the scene.

“By us being able to drive the drone to the scene gives us a lot of different capabilities. One, we’re not transversing over homes or parks or things like that,” said QCFMD Firefighter Sigifredo Castro, who took the lead in developing the mobile system. “When you’re going from point A to point B, you have to take the weather into account, and you have to take the battery life into account. We removed all those aspects of it, so we’re able to stay on station longer (and) provide the incident commander with a whole new set of eyes.”

The drone is equipped with thermal-imaging capabilities and can assist with a range of incidents including structure fires, brush fires, major crashes, search-and-rescue operations and hazardous material situations.

Live video feeds are transmitted directly to command staff and responding units to help guide decisions in real time.

When a battalion chief arrives at the incident scene, he slides the tray where Dorothy is mounted in the truck and from there trained firefighters such as Castro pilot the drones remotely. Meanwhile, the battalion chief and battalion safety officer are the on-the-ground eyes as the drones are being flown remotely.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Dorothy is it adds another layer of protection for QCFMD personnel battling a blaze.

In one incident a few months ago, Dorothy guided firefighters to safety as they took on a fire in a large home.

“We were able to see the instability of that structure with that drone, and that allowed us to talk with the incident commander to let them know that ‘Hey, we need to get crews to exit out of the structure,’ which they did,” Castro said. “Then 60 seconds after they exited the structure, that structure did collapse.”

The drones’ infrared systems provide night-vision capacity, which comes in handy as an estimated 75% of calls take place in the evening hours, Castro said.

Dorothy also helps QCFMD to strengthen its good-neighbor policy by assisting fire departments in nearby towns such as Mesa, Gilbert and Phoenix.

Castro began working on the project that would become Dorothy in 2025 and ran it through a variety of trial flights. He was a natural for spearheading the new program as he spent 13 years in the U.S. Army as an aviation operations specialist.

“It was a really easy transition for me to kind of take on this program,” Castro said. “Our (drone) program has actually been around since 2018. I just happened to revamp it in 2025, and I just took some of that past knowledge and experience that I have and then absorbed what the current fire service is doing.”

Currently, there are seven pilots on QCFMD’s drone team who are constantly training. But not every drone operator gets to use Dorothy.

“Dorothy is a whole different level of skill and training that we make mandatory for our pilots to learn and have X amount of hours,” Castro said. “To just even be able to be part of the drone team, you have to have a Part 107 license that allows you to be a commercial drone pilot and then we have other in-house trainings.

“I would say the training is pretty rigorous on our end, but that’s what we want from our pilots.”

All drone operations are conducted in accordance with federal aviation regulations and are limited to emergency response and approved public safety training.

Dorothy’s docking platform and eight drones cost the town about $103,000. That’s money well spent to ensure the safety of the community and especially that of firefighters.

“Dorothy has proven to protect the lives of our firefighters and optimize how we respond to emergencies.” Vice Mayor Bryan McClure said. “This advancement in technology is helping make our community even safer for both our residents and first responders.”

Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org. Please send your comments about this article to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.