Drone gift will aid search and rescue operations

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This article was published 08/05/2025 (227 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon’s Jeff Ross says he had so much appreciation for the search and rescue volunteers who did their best to try to find his missing brother three years ago that he ended up joining the Brandon Regional Search and Rescue Association.

“That is how I gave back to the people who stepped up and helped me and my family in our time of need. Joining the team was just a no-brainer for me — it’s been my therapy.”

And now, Ross is providing the group with a drone that has thermal-imaging technology he hopes will help searchers, as well as those who are “holding out hope” as they wait to hear about a missing loved one.

When Ross’s brother, Jordan, was reported missing in June 2022, multiple search and rescue teams and volunteers spent weeks looking for him along and near the Assiniboine River.

While efforts to find Jordan alive were not successful, Jeff said he was grateful for the hundreds of hours the searchers spent looking.

“If my brother hadn’t been found 14 days after he went missing, I’d probably still be on the river looking for him, because that closure is important.”

And that’s why Ross said he is providing the group with the drone that he purchased out of pocket at a cost of $40,000.

What drove him to it, he said, was asking what additional tools would improve the odds of finding the subject.

“There are lots of other search teams using thermal technology — in B.C., for example. If there’s a heat signature coming from, let’s say a little girl in the woods, we can pinpoint that a little quicker and maybe get the team to that person.

“There are still so many skills and competencies that come with being a search and rescue team member, this is just an additional tool,” he said.

Ross has an advanced drone licence, which allows him to fly in a controlled airspace as long as he keeps the drone within his line of sight, so he can fly it up to 20 kilometres away.

The DGI Matrice 350 RTK weighs about 14 pounds and has four cameras with optical zoom, night vision, and the ability to record in high definition and thermal imaging at the same time. It has a GPS, and can go up to 400 feet, but Ross said the ideal height is about 100 feet.

It’s weather- and dust-proof and requires two batteries, which gives it a flight time of 55 minutes. The controller has a seven-inch-high definition screen.

“It’s pretty cool to operate,” Ross said. “If you’re looking at your screen on your controller, you just pinpoint a spot by touching it, and it would tell you how far out that subject is from you, and then it would actually pinpoint it on a map.

“And then the team would have an active readout of exactly what bearing they would have to go to intercept to find that person.

“We would also have a couple of eyes on a bigger screen that I connect with looking for a hot spot, or something that looks like a person, or maybe a shoe — something that’s not supposed to be there.

“It’s about how to support the ground search,” he said.

There are about 35 members of the Brandon Regional Search and Rescue Association, all volunteers. It is one of only two teams in the province that is dedicated to ground search and rescue, said executive director Robin Ponto.

When someone is reported missing, Ponto is contacted by the RCMP as well as the Office of the Fire Commissioner, which sets up a command post and deploys the members of BRSRA.

Ponto said Ross’s drone will give searchers an edge they never had before.

“For sure, it’s amazing. I sincerely appreciate what he’s done,” said Ponto, who is also an instructor at the Manitoba Emergency Services College in Brandon and a casual employee of the OFC.

“The drone can cover a lot of area in a short period of time and be pretty thorough. And dependent on what you find, you would go back to the command post and report to the incident commander,” he said.

“So we ask, ‘What do you want us to do? Do you want us to deploy a team to where we have a suspected hit to a heat signature that could be a person?’ So then a team would be sent out there to search that area.”

Both Ponto and Ross said they agreed that the next step is to put the drone to use.

“It has a lot of automation,” Ross said, “but as a pilot I still have to be able to control it manually. So, I’m enhancing my skills and will do a lot of practice in the Brandon Hills or wherever I can fly.

“I can only go until I can’t see the drone anymore — that’s visual line of sight. So we’re looking into getting a certificate for beyond visual line of sight, and that’s through Transport Canada,” said Ross.

“Because at the end of the day, it’s all about the person that’s out there and the family that needs the help that they need, right?”

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