A Bay Area startup that manufactures drones to tackle wildfires has just signed its first customer, the Aspen Fire Protection District. The company, Seneca, recently announced that its fleet of five drones (dubbed a “strike team”) would be coming to the famed Colorado ski town this summer, making Aspen the first wildfire agency in America to add these types of aircraft to its arsenal. Each drone is designed to carry enough water “to create over 50 gallons of finished foam suppressant,” which can reduce the speed at which a wildfire consumes fuel. The drones are designed to be able to reach and extinguish a small fire before humans can. “We’re looking at them primarily as an early suppression resource,” Jake Andersen, the chief of Aspen Fire, told Ars. “We have [panoramic] AI cameras that are very good at rapidly detecting a fire. What we’re not always good at is getting people there immediately. It’s one thing if it’s on the side of a road, but if it’s not—I’ve hiked into fires in my career that are six or eight miles away. The range [of each drone] is about three to five miles, so this would really be a game changer.” Seneca, which was founded in 2024, is one of a number of “firetech” companies founded in recent years that are trying to change the way that wildfires are prevented or extinguished. Nationwide, wildfires are becoming larger, more destructive, and more frequent. According to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention & Control, “The average core wildfire season is 78 days longer than in the 1970s, with Colorado experiencing large fires every month of the year.”