Wildland firefighting drones are being tested in B.C.

Santana Dreaver · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 28, 2025 6:06 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

Alex Deslauriers and Melanie Bitner's location was 1 of 56 properties destroyed by the Downton Lake wildfire 2 years ago. 

A occurrence tornado — a operation of utmost occurrence intensity, little humidity and a debased dew constituent —  swept done the assemblage of Gun Lake, astir 61 kilometres northbound of Pemberton, B.C., successful August 2023, during Canada's astir destructive occurrence play connected record. 

A moving aerospace engineer, Deslauriers started brainstorming innovative ways to combat wildfires, to forestall others from a akin fate. 

LISTEN | A Canadian institution is innovating a wildfire defence mechanism:

"There has to beryllium thing that tin beryllium done with the exertion disposable today," Deslauriers thought to himself pursuing the fire.

Along with David Thanh, a erstwhile B.C. Wildfire warden and Bitner, a communications expert, the trio co-founded Fireswarm Solutions — a Canadian institution that, erstwhile investigating is done, aims to proviso heavy-duty drones to archetypal responders. 

Known arsenic Thunder Wasp drones, these quad-rotor drones UAVs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, are built by Swedish aerospace institution ACC Innovations.

According to Bitner,  ACC innovations manufactures the drones and the heavy-lift level that they instrumentality formation from and instrumentality to, portion FireSwarm makes the drones "fire-ready" by attaching sensors with AI swarm algorithms that are good known successful defence. 

The main quality betwixt a Thunder Wasp drone and a regular recreational-use drone is the dense lifting capability. 

The lifting capableness is 400 kilograms, and the drones tin alert for 2 hours. Three Thunder Wasp drones tin assistance 1,200 kilograms. According to the B.C. Wildfire Service, a medium-sized chopper tin assistance 1,100 – 1,600 kilograms.

When deployed and acceptable to fly, the drones measure 3.5 by 3.5 metres. Deslauriers says that drones are astir utile during the nighttime erstwhile wildfires tin intensify and pilots are not capable to fly. 

"We are addressing a request that is unmet astatine this point," Deslauriers said.

FireSwam is moving with the Strategic Natural Resource Group, besides known arsenic Strategic, an exigency effect absorption firm, to trial the drones' quality to combat wildfire successful B.C. implicit the people of the wildfire season. 

Strategic, the largest Indigenous-owned earthy assets consultancy successful Western Canada, has a long-standing narration with the B.C. Wildfire Service — deploying other firefighting crews erstwhile needed for the past 20 years, said CEO Domenico Iannidinardo.

In an email to CBC News, the B.C. Wildfire Service said it is observing the investigating to spot if the drones could, successful future, beryllium utilized successful a provincial wildfire response.

The investigating is being done successful the Squamish Valley. Iannidinardo says the drones are capable to bucket h2o autonomously, dropping it disconnected connected a marked X. 

The B.C. Wildfire Service said these circumstantial Thunder Wasp drones are not being utilized for wildfire effect anyplace other successful the world. 

"No 1 is addressing the occupation the mode we are, utilizing dense assistance drones and installing sensors to suppress fires," Deslauriers said.

"It's a implicit out-of-body experience to beryllium honest. To beryllium faced with a occupation 2 years ago, to beryllium capable to bring an astonishing squad unneurotic and get to this point," 

Deslauriers and Iannidinardo accidental they purpose to person the drones approved and successful work for the 2026 wildfire play successful B.C.