A DRONE owned by the fire service has been used once in Bolton out of the 14 times it has been officially deployed so far.

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was sent into the air on September 5 to help find a person missing from an extra care housing scheme in Eden Street, Astley Bridge.

The elderly woman who had disappeared was later found in Bolton town centre by police officers.

It was only one of two missing person incidents for which the device — an Aeryon Skyranger equipped with an infra-red camera — has been in the sky.

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service bought the drone in spring this year and recruited pilots who were trained between March and June.

The Aerial Imagery Reconnaissance Unit began to be used in July to give a unique overview of situations.

However, before coming into service the drone was sent to a blaze off Station Road in Blackrod during a three-month trial period in spring 2014.

Nearby businesses were evacuated for an hour because of the dangers posed by an acetylene cylinder close to the fire and the unit hovered overhead to document the scene.

AIR Unit lead pilot Watch Manager Chris Rainford, one of six people who have full pilot’s licence in order to fly the aircraft remotely, said: “The unit is extremely helpful in providing a unique bird’s eye view of an incident, which incident commanders have never had before.

"It has several objectives while in flight, the most important of which is to monitor the safety of firefighters on the ground by spotting hidden dangers and rapidly developing fires.

"It also helps an incident commander plan his strategy when dealing with an incident, therefore bringing it to a conclusion more quickly than was the case beforehand.

"It also allows us to send a camera into situations which would be extremely dangerous for firefighters, such as collapsed structures or hazardous materials incidents, in order to check for hidden dangers and also for any casualties that are missing.

"We have also used the unit to look for missing people in partnership with the police because the unit’s wide area search capability is approximately 20 times quicker than human intervention."

Although Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service were the first to buy drones, GMFRS's device is the only one in the country available round-the-clock to respond to incidents in a dedicated car equipped with blue lights.

The unit requires a team of two — a pilot and a ground crew member — and has a maximum flight duration of around 35 minutes and can reach 130 metres in height and 750m distance from the pilot.

Large-scale incidents the drone has attended include the fatal Bosley flour mill explosion in Cheshire in July and a rooftop protest by a prisoner at HMP Strangeways in Manchester in September.

The fire service's drone is not the only one being used to see blazes from above.

In June The Bolton News reported how James Boyers, a qualified UAV pilot and works for creative design company Porfolio in St Georges Square in Bolton town centre, shot footage of the aftermath of a moorland fire in Winter Hill, Horwich.