Good Afternoon,
Thank you for taking the time to read and review our grant application for a UAV to assist our agency.

To provide you a little background, this UAV would be used in conjunction with many agencies in both Sea Girt and Brielle, New Jersey. Back in 2019 both municipalities enacted a shared service agreement for Fire Prevention, Investigation, and Protection services, with the host agency being Sea Girt. In this short time, our agency went from performing about 100 fire prevention and investigations annually to over 400.

Additionally, this past month, we have updated our agreement to include Code Enforcement inspections and services for both municipalities.
So, in a matter of 1-year, the Sea Girt Code Enforcement and Fire Prevention offices went from 225 inspections to over 700 inspections annually.

With this increase, we are always looking for the best tools and equipment to help out our shared services as well as the other agencies we work closely with.
The Borough of Sea Girt is a New Jersey shore community consisting of approximately 1,800 year round residents. As this seems small, we jump up to almost 20,000 during the busy summer months. We are bordered to the north by Wreck Pond, to the west by our neighboring community of Wall Township, to the south is Stockton Lake, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. We are 1.4 square miles of a mostly residential community, with the exception of the New Jersey National Guard Training Academy that covers roughly 190 acres of military training grounds and housing.

The Borough of Brielle is another New Jersey shore community consisting of roughly 4,800 year round residents, but jumping to 15,000 during the summer months. Bordered to the north by the Glimmer Glass tidal basin, to the west by Wall Township, and to the south and east by the Manasquan River. Brielle covers almost 2.5 square miles of a mostly residential community, with the exception of the Manasquan River Golf Course and many docks & marinas as Brielle is billed as the Sport Fishing Capital of New Jersey.

Our goals for the UAV would be multi-faceted. Our ideal UAV would enable us to provide search & rescue to any missing swimmer in the Atlantic Ocean or adjoining beach as well as any swimmer or boater in the Manasquan River. The best case UAV would have the ability to not only have a regular high resolution camera for this, but a thermal or night-vision camera as well. This additional feature would be ideal in searches in the water, as a small heat signature above the water of a missing person could mean life or death for the one who has gone missing.

For the investigation aspect of the UAV, we have many instances in our small communities where we need up to date images of properties and fire aftermath. This would include any fire at all from an exterior fire to even a small room & contents fire. For investigation, the more pictures and information we have, the better we can be to make accurate decisions to determine origin and cause of any incident.

Looking at our past investigations, in 2019 there were at least 8 investigations where a UAV would have been ideal to get the overall scene photos to show burn patterns in the outside areas. During these investigations, we had to rely on a neighboring agencies aerial ladder and have the scene photographer at the end of the ladder taking pictures, adding an additional risk factor to a member of the team that we are looking to eliminate.

With this UAV, the Fire Prevention Bureau will work closely with out Police Departments, First Aid Squads, beach lifeguards, as well as our Marine Division to cross train the agencies on its use and care, so at any time, it can be rapidly deployed.

We intend to obtain the proper licenses and certificates to fly the UAV throughout our communities in the event of any emergency as well as our training evolution.

If you have any questions, or need any additional information from me, please do not hesitate to contact me at any time, and I will be happy to help at any time.