Winnipeg fire crews pulled out new technology for the first time, deploying a drone to help tackle a large blaze.
Just before 8:00 p.m. Tuesday, emergency crews arrived on scene at the 700 block of Selkirk Avenue. Fire tore through a locksmith business. Kathy Rudenko-Ciunyck and her husband own the building, ran the locksmith shop inside and lived there too.
"40 years of my life is now gone," said Rudenko-Ciunyck.
They were next door when a neighbour told them their home and business of four decades was going up in flames. They tried to get back in, the smoke was too thick.
"I was so shook up at the back door I couldn't get the key in so he quickly opened the door and as soon as he opened the door smoke hit him," said Rudenko-Ciunyck.
The blaze so intense, fire fighters had to take a defensive position from the get go. But it gave them an opportunity to test new technology now available to the service for the first time -- a drone.
"An elevated advantage point to see hot spots in a defensive fire where it was unsafe to put crews inside our building." said Asst. Chief Jason Shaw with the WFPS.
The drone detects where hot spots are from high above, allowing fire fighters to stay at a safe distance while saving time.
"The drone was able to help the incident commanders really tactically decide where they were going to apply water streams from,” said Shaw.
The drone won't be needed for every call like the Selkirk fire, but someone is trained how to use it on every shift just in case.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, no damage estimates are available.
