A Bermudian living in the United States described how drones helped boost emergency-service response times and supported crews to do their jobs more effectively.

Ricardo Fox moved from Bermuda to Louisville, Kentucky, with his mother and younger siblings in 1995, when he was 9.

He lived in Sandys and attended Southampton Glebe and Port Royal Primary School before moving to the US state, where his mother is from.

He has worked with the Louisville Emergency Management Agency for a decade and his primary role is to maintain radio systems for communication by emergency services across three counties.

Mr Fox has loved piloting drones since receiving one as a gift about nine years ago.

The Louisville Emergency Management Agency looked into how the technology could assist first responders four years ago and Mr Fox became certified to use the equipment commercially within the US at that time.

He said drones had helped first responders with everything from finding missing people to assessing damage after natural disasters.

Mr Fox explained: “The infrared camera makes finding people easy, especially during the night but also during the day.

“We have assisted in finding lost children, hikers or people experiencing a mental health crisis or with cognitive conditions such as dementia in both city and rural environments.”

Mr Fox spoke to WDRB News in Kentucky last month after drones helped firefighters find a blaze at an apartment building in Old Louisville.

He told The Royal Gazette that infrared cameras on drones could “see through the smoke and see where the fire is, where smoke and heat are coming from and how the situation is changing in real time, so command can make decisions in real time”.

Mr Fox said drones also visualised gas concentrations in the air after major incidents, including the Givaudan Sense Colour facility explosion on November 12, 2024 and a UPS plane crash on November 4, 2025.

Two people died and three were injured in the explosion, while 14 were killed and 23 hurt in the plane crash.

Mr Fox added that drones could also carry water and life-saving equipment to people in distress before emergency services arrived at the scene, they could help officers to monitor large events and some were small enough to fly indoors.

He explained: “They also let us see things we otherwise couldn’t — through smoke with infrared, into a barricaded home with an FPV [first-person view] drone, over miles of flood or tornado damage in minutes instead of hours or days, all without putting a person into that danger first.”

He said the Louisville Emergency Management Agency was expected to double the number of drone docks — which house equipment that can be ready at a moment’s notice — in the city from eight to 16 this month.

Mr Fox, who occasionally visits Bermuda to see his father, aunts and cousins, added: “[Drones are] a fast, relatively affordable and increasingly essential tool for keeping both the public and our personnel safer.”