Imagine a system that could provide public safety, emergency medical services, law enforcement, fire abatement and communications in one small fleet of hydrogen powered UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) that are able to stay in the air up to 13 hours and to be on call day or night in any weather.

These drones would work as communication conduit in dead zones, infrared cameras looking for missing persons, camera video to watch in real time events up to 400 feet below them. They could carry medical supplies to the scene of an accident or parts or tools needed for an emergency.

Now think of the first 33 miles of I-90 from Lookout Pass in the Mineral County during the winter, which is one of the most dangerous sections of the interstate in the nation.

Arne Thompson, Managing Partner of AB Aero Partners in Seattle, is in the drone business.

“We believe that what we have, in conjunction with Jeremy (Crowley) from the University of Montana and T-Mobile, will be able to enhance and create connectivity between St. Regis and Lookout Pass for cell phones. There are 20 miles of dead zones in that stretch.”

OK, is this a done deal and if so, what happens next and when?

“We’ve applied for a couple of different grants. One is with the DOE (Department of Energy) to build a hydrogen farm in St. Regis. And the connection with drones is that if you power one of these with hydrogen, it will go three to five times longer than it would on batteries. So, the twist is that people are doing this for public safety, but we are doing it in connection with hydrogen and we believe that we have a good shot of St. Regis becoming a hydrogen hub of up to 2,000 kilograms a day.

Jeremy Crowley is director of the Autonomous Aerial Systems Office at the University of Montana.

“I’ve been teaching people to fly drones for 10 years and I’m going to be the main person doing the workforce training,” which will be conducted in the former visitors center of the St. Regis Community Center. The training will be for first responders and students but is open to anyone who is interested in learning to become certified to fly drones.

As Crowley lifts a 5-pound drone from the table, he explains the options.

“This one specifically has a wide view camera, much like a fisheye. It has a 20 X zoom and it has a thermal camera. It also has a laser time-of-flight measurer which will tell you how hot an object is and how far away it is. Plus, it drops a pin so the exact location is marked. This is one search and rescue operations often use.”

Crowley is as passionate about these projects as Thompson is.

“We’re going to try to save lives. We’ll be offering drone training and hydrogen-handling,” he said.

“The governor’s office set up a meeting to discuss how we could get better connectivity and broadband issues, said George Bailey to 40 people at the meeting on Thursday.

“One of the leaders of the team said that the 33 miles between St. Regis and Lookout Pass would be the perfect place to test some of these advanced communication concepts and technologies. And there is this Smart Highway grant we’re applying for early next month, so we’ve been working on this for some time.

Mineral County Commissioner Duane Simons endorsed the project by saying the dead-spots in that area have been a serious issue since the interstate was built.

“We’ve put up with it and put up with it and it’s affecting our sheriff’s department. It’s affecting the highway patrol, snowplows, everybody. And the people driving it. We need to fix this problem and this grant that George (Bailey) is working on which he brought to us (the county commissioners) asking if we would buy into, and we said that we would. I think we’re well on our way to solving that problem.”

Someone who has had firsthand experience with communication problems in that area is Rep. Denley Loge, R-St. Regis, and chair of the House Transportation Committee.

“So, I put in 17 years up there on road constructions and then another 28 years maintaining it for the state with many hours driving a snowplow. You talk about dead zones up there! Many times, we’d get stranded behind a wreck and not be able to communicate with anyone for a couple of hours. There was no communication with EMS or the sheriff. None.”

Mineral County Sheriff Ryan Funke shared similar thoughts.

“I just know that if I’m up on that pass on an auto crash scene or searching for somebody and I grab my handheld radio, it will not work, period," Funke said. "My car (radio) works maybe 50% of the time on a good day. But we’re usually not at our car. It just creates a giant safety issue along with public safety not having reliable means to communicate,” shared Mineral County Sheriff Ryan Funke.

Brian Tucci, Northwest Market Manager for T-Mobil explained their attraction.

“Partnerships with T-Mobil and innovative ideas is really where we hang our hat. We have partnerships in eastern Washington and Oregon where we’re doing fire warnings ahead of time. We put cameras on our (cell tower) sites to determine locations where fires are at their early stages. This past season, we detected 30 fires a day and got response out there as fast as possible. So, when George (Bailey) called us up, we wondered how is this physically going to work. But at the same time, innovation and ideas like this ultimately solves the problems and that’s where this partnership is important with us working with the community.”

Recapping an enthusiastic meeting, none of the projects are guaranteed, yet. It all depends on grants and the one for the hydrogen farm should be known in the first part of October. And that’s the same time the Smart Highway grant is being submitted with results expected next spring.