EHang Holdings' EH216F firefighting model, EH216 and Falcon B Series were utilised in a recent UAV fire rescue drill in Laixi City, Qingdao, in Shandong Province, China to collaborate with the local Emergency Management Bureau, Fire Rescue Brigade, Housing and Construction Bureau and other departments to successfully complete high-rise firefighting and emergency rescue exercises with smart emergency rescue and aerial firefighting technologies. This is the first time the EH216F has been applied by emergency fire departments in a fire drill after it successfully completed the technical examination by the China National Fire-Fighting Equipment Quality Supervision Testing Center.

The drill replicated a high-rise fire scenario on a construction site. The Emergency Command Bureau of Laixi City quickly dispatched multiple EH216F, EH216 and EHang Falcon B Series aircraft to provide emergency air support. The dispatched aircraft completed tasks such as fire detection, aerial broadcasting, airdropping emergency firefighting supplies, breaking high-rise windows, extinguishing fires and rescuing trapped persons among other functions as solutions to critical pain points in urban high-rise firefighting and greatly improve emergency rescue and firefighting efficiency.

This fire drill is based on the authentic lack of capabilities in local high-rise emergency rescue and firefighting forces, demonstrating the advantages of UAVs in high-rise rescue, such as breaking through space limitations, rapid response, remote monitoring, cluster management, multi-machine linkage and avoiding casualties. Meanwhile, AAVs also supplement the UAV emergency rescue and firefighting force in Laixi City, helping to establish an efficient unified command, prompt response and orderly coordination UAV emergency rescue and firefighting linkage mechanism. This would provide more accuracy for more effective auxiliary decision-making in handling emergencies and improve the overall capabilities of urban emergency rescue and firefighting forces.

“The fire rescue drill in Qingdao demonstrated the practical utilisation of EHang to support smart city emergency response and firefighting management in air firefighting and rescue scenarios,” says EHang founder, chairman and CEO Huazhi Hu. “EHang provides a new solution based on our core AAV technologies for intelligent aerial fire emergency rescue through integrating multiple functions such as aerial fire detection, fire extinguishing, rescue, emergency and firefighting management. In the future, this can be expected as a fundamental element in building a lifeline for more urban high rise firefighting scenarios and power the optimisation of smart city emergency response and firefighting management systems.”