departments in the region when locating a missing person. The department already helps out with off-road rescues in the region, but Fleury said that after an incident last year when a person went missing at night.

“What do you do at night time when there’s somebody lost in the bush?” he said. “You can’t just form a team and start walking to go look for them because you don’t know where to begin.”

He said that they had looked at several models and settled on one in the $6,000 range. It comes equipped with a thermal camera that can detect a person’s body heat, as well as a microphone and various lights and sensors. Fleury said that it has a range of 15 km and four of his firefighters would be conducting extensive training in order to be able to fly the machine.

“[They’re] going to have about 40 hours of online training to do before their final exam,” he explained. “Drones go by their weight, since it weighs a certain amount of kilograms, you basically need to be a commercial pilot to operate it, a normal guy off the street can’t just pick it up and fly it because the technology it has onboard.”

The training will cost roughly $3,000 per person, for an overall project cost of $18,000 including the price of the machine. The training includes online tests as well as a practical exam.

Fleury said that the cost will be covered with money that they had raised through community functions and donations. He hoped to have the training complete by the May long weekend.

“Legally, nobody can operate the drone unless they have a pilot’s license. All of my other guys can’t touch it,” he said. “We can’t even fly it in the Municipality of Sheenboro unless we let the base at Petawawa know about the aircraft. Any airspace the military occupies, you’ve got to let them know that you’re flying a drone.”

At the MRC Pontiac Council meeting on March 17, the mayors unanimously approved a resolution put forward by MRC Fire and Public Safety Coordinator Julien Gagnon, which stated that the Pontiac Ouest Department would make the drone available at request to the rest of the Pontiac departments at a rate of $100 per hour, paid for by the budget for emergency rescue in isolated areas.

“They didn’t want it sitting on a shelf, so they just wanted our … support so it will be used in the event of a missing person,” he explained after the meeting, noting that they typically have several such calls each year. “If we save one life, it’s worth the price of purchase. To me that’s money well spent.”

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