Since last summer’s “megafires” in Gironde, firefighters have been trying to find new solutions to monitor, prevent and fight fires. Artificial intelligence, drones, airships… All avenues are good to explore. On the occasion of the Paris Air Show, the results of a call for expressions of interest launched by Aérospace Valley were unveiled. Thales giants feature in the selection alongside a “little Thumb” straight from Mimizan.
This is Aerostats, an “artisanal technology TPE” as described by Laurent Ignacel, its CEO. With four employees in all and for all, it produces airships and balloons and thanks to their autonomous balloon project, called Egg50, the Landais will be able to tackle a new sector. That of post-fire surveillance.
A first experiment in July
When firefighters extinguish a fire, fumes – basement fires – but also fire swings – embers carried by the wind – can rekindle the fire. To avoid this, foresters, hunters, volunteers from the DFCI (defense of forests against fires) and municipal agents are constantly vigilant “only equipped with a watering can, a shovel and a water tank. water “. Insufficient means according to Laurent Ignacel. “We can’t wait for the fire to go back up,” says the entrepreneur. And if, unfortunately, these circumstances arise, the Egg50 will be deployed in July.
For its first experiment with the firefighters of Gironde (Sdis33), two helium balloons with a wingspan of three meters will be sent above the town of Hostens, in the south of the department. There, lignite, a kind of coal, continues to burn in the basements a year after the fires. “It’s still nearly 200 degrees at ten meters deep,” explains Laurent Ignacel. “And it smolders”. This raises the fear of a new fire with the drought combined with a possible rise in temperatures.
The famous balloons, unlike dirigibles, are connected to the ground by means of a winch. At low altitude, 50 meters high, these machines will analyze soil temperatures 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using thermal sensors. If the fire rises from the basements, the temperature will rise and an alarm will be sent instantly to the firefighters.
New versions to come
As soon as the “go” is given by the board of directors of Sdis33, these small balloons will be deployed for the fire season. Laurent Ignacel hopes that this experiment will be fruitful and will make it possible to sign other agreements for a larger number of Egg50s, designed to be deployed in a cluster. “I have good hopes”, he slips us. The same experiment should soon begin in the Landes, but also in Nîmes. “The final objective: as soon as there is fire surveillance, there is one of our balloons. »
At the same time, Aerostats is developing new improvements to its balloons, including the upcoming release of an Egg120. This one will be able to fly at 120 meters in height and will only need a technical revision every month, against once every 14 days for the current models.
Uses in other settings
But then why wait until there are fires to deploy these balloons? Why not arrange them upstream? “Generally, the intervention of firefighters takes place when a column of smoke is spotted. There is therefore interest in having a tool that flies very high covering a large surface. While we are more in a tactical zoning, covered at low altitude, ”explains the CEO.
In the future, Laurent Ignacel sees other uses for his balloon, especially in the event of flooding. “During rising waters, people are evacuated on boats. But animals, for example, are sometimes left behind. Thanks to thermal signatures, our balloons are able to locate them and say precisely where they are,” explains Laurent Ignacel.
In the fire recovery monitoring market, Aerostats is not alone. As revealed by the specialist journal Surveyor, the Parallèle 45 firm from Lacanau carried out short flights of drones with thermal cameras last summer on the same principle as Laurent Ignacel’s balloons. “I tend to remember a statistic: a drone uses 76% of its battery to stay in the air,” says the businessman. One more argument in favor of its autonomous balloons.