Eyes in the sky: Drones help Simcoe County paramedics assess emergencies

A drone is assisting Simcoe County paramedics assess emergency situations. (CTV News/Luke Simard)

It’s a sign of the times as Simcoe County paramedics have begun to utilize drones to help them assess emergency situations.

Ryan Cresanto, commander of operations for the County of Simcoe, said the drones are used in a variety of ways.

“Remote patient locating or search and rescue is important,” said Cresanto. “Our drones have thermal infrared capability, so it makes it a little easier to locate patients that are lost.”

The County currently has four drone aircrafts and 18 pilots trained to operate them, allowing paramedics the time and space to properly assess situations.

“It allows our incident commanders the ability to have the right information, the right situational awareness to make resource decisions and to improve responders’ safety and improve patient safety,” said Cresanto.

Grant Durfey, emergency management for the County, said they are not the only agency to use drones during emergency calls. Police services across our region use drones, using unique collaboration to ensure productivity if more than one drone is at the scene.

“We want to ensure if paramedics have a drone that can work on patient triage and assessment, police have a drone made for searching that those drones work effectively together,” said Durfey. “So if the police drone finds somebody, our paramedic drone can then readily come in, do that assessment and deliver what they need to deliver.”

The drones used by paramedics have various jobs including, locating patients, small item delivery and more.

“It’s not about who gets there first or who has the fanciest toys, it’s about how do we work together and really support the mission,” said Cresanto. “We’ve also spent a lot of time recently with deconfliction exercises. So when you have multiple drones, multiple agencies in the air at the same time, how do we avoid each other.”

Last week, there was a prime example of collaboration with paramedics assisting Oro-Medonte Fire on Highway 11.

“Our drone pilots also have the ability to support agencies by providing that same situational awareness, the overwatch, where they can identify hotspots, they can monitor fire crews as they enter and exit buildings, and then improve the safety for the responders,” said Cresanto.

Officials hope future drones will work towards heavy lifting, including equipment from inaccessible areas and weigh into the future potential patients.