I normally don't like to post extremely short blogs that just link to another article, but I think this has been a long time coming. 

I can't say that I hope for severe charges/fines against the operator (at this time), but I do hope that we only have to put up with one more season of seeing this in the news every other day. 

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A Foresthill man has been arrested on suspicion of interfering with firefighting operations during the recent Trailhead Fire by flying a drone over the fire, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The presence of the drone forced Cal Fire to ground firefighting aircraft due to the risk of a collision.

Information posted on social media helped lead Cal Fire law enforcement officers to 57-year-old Eric Wamser. He was arrested Friday afternoon and booked into the Placer County jail.

This is the first arrest by Cal Fire law enforcement of a drone operator on suspicion of interfering with firefighting, according to a Cal Fire news release.

Over the past two years, fire officials say they have seen increasing numbers of hobby drones flying over wildfires and interfering with aerial firefighting operations.

Air tankers and firefighting helicopters fly at low altitudes to drop fire retardant and water. When drones fly in the same air space, fire officials are forced to pull back aircraft to prevent a collision. Fire officials stress that hobby drones should never be flown in or around fire areas.

Officials say Wamser’s actions delayed aerial firefighting on a fire burning in the steep canyon of the middle fork of the American River near Todd Valley.

The Trailhead Fire started June 28 and was reported 98 percent contained Saturday. It burned more than 5,600 acres and forced hundreds of residents in Placer and El Dorado counties to evacuate their homes.

Wamser is suspected of flying his hobby drone over the fire during the evening of June 28 to take video and photos, Cal Fire officials said.

“The Trailhead Fire was burning in such a remote area that our aircraft were critical to stopping the fire,” Chief George Morris III, Cal Fire’s Nevada-Yuba-Placer unit chief, said in a written statement. “Every minute we couldn’t fly our aircraft because of this drone, the fire was able to grow and do more damage.”

One reason I constantly check DIYdrones throughout the day is the tenancy to have well-written and informative blog posts on the front page, as opposed to some of the "hype machine news" found elsewhere, though we get our share as well. 

This blog post is really intended to be "just a blog post". I have multiple half-finished and in progress blog posts started (all relating to this topic), and I always want to add a little more substance and evidence first, in an effort to contribute to the quality of discussions I admire here. In this case, I feel that it's important to urge a little movement in a specific direction and offer up some signature rambling. 

I did not get into UAS/drones for agricultural purposes, but stumbling across the topic is inevitable. In the past year or so, most of my focus has been on the agricultural side of commercial UAS use. I have zero relevant background in this regard, which is exactly what qualifies me to write THIS specific blog post. While information on requirements and uses for multispectral cameras (ranging from low end to scientifically calibrated) is readily available in peer reviewed articles with case studies and examples, this information is often difficult to comprehend without dedicating a significant amount of time to learning it. 

Holding true to our philosophy at the fire department, I've been attempting a "The best way to learn is to teach" approach by making my contribution to this community a guide on NDVI, based on referenced and verifiable studies that typically don't show up in a google search. The conversations I've been having are frightening. 

The summary is "The NDVI capabilities of drones that is being marketed is, at best, a gross overestimation".

I really want that quote to sink in for a moment, because I have a different viewpoint on the implications. The bad side is that reputations like this have the potential to cause some involuntary career changes. The good side is that the problem can be solved by shedding some of our own ignorance, as the cause is really our lack of understanding. Thankfully, the above quote was followed up by a conversation about how some of the converted camera's many of us are using DO have a use, but it is critical to understand and implement some workflow steps, and there also needs to be an understanding of the biodiversity of the area of operations and how it pertains to the information you're trying to extract. That information needs to be understood to determine if your sensor's capabilities are able to extract it. 

With limited understanding, many of these conversations with people experienced in remote sensing and agriculture (but without a stake in the UAS industry) scared the hell out of me. I've had ongoing interactions with people from almost every data processing company I can think of, as well as a few manufacturers. I'm really rooting for everyone to succeed and didn't want to start citing data that is detrimental to many efforts, especially with limited understanding myself and far less on-the-line than others. I still maintain that viewpoint, and this is the basis of my reasoning for writing this blog. The wide-spread belief of "Farmers can save $____ with drone-collected NDVI" is possible, and it is possible with a variety of camera options...but it's not possible without a widespread understanding and accountability for the steps that need to be taken for this data to be useful. Every drone-related agricultural service is going to contribute to the reputation of capabilities of others, because right now it is all seen as the same cup o' tea. 

My initial plan for compiling this data for the average Joe attempting to get into a drones-as-a-service role has expanded to include much more information than I initially intended. I foresee this being a long process of learning myself and having the drafts reviewed by the people that have offered up their assistance, but I'd like to see some progress from others, big and small, to increase their understanding of the service being offered. You can justify the effort on the grounds of ethics, capitalism or self-preservation, but it's an essential step either way. 

Drones & Firefighting

I wanted to (quickly) share some experiences with the use of drones in firefighting, as my UAS and goals differ a bit from most departments we've seen that are starting to use drones. 

I am a career firefighter that recently relocated to a small rural community in Oregon, surrounded by thousands of acres of agriculture. While we do get structure fires, the majority of our fires are wildland, usually involving wheat fields. In many situations, multi-rotors make a lot of sense (see: Branford fire uses DJI Phantom on quarry fire). I also have a multi-rotor that stays near my turnout gear and I've gotten in the habit of grabbing it if I'm heading to a structure fire. Thus far, I have yet to respond to a call where it would be useful. The main reason I started building my own fixed-wing drones is to increase flight time and allow for active and ongoing monitoring of large, non-structure fires. My main goal for this project is to create a resource that is invaluable for planning a fire attack, and is therefore useful enough to justify taking a firefighter "out of the fight" in order to operate the drone throughout the event. 

We are still working on our 333 and COA application, which I have been neglecting way more than I should have during this entire 6 months. Because we don't have the authorization to use these during a fire (And I'm not talking about USFS or DOI managed forest fires), I have been very reluctant to use them during an event. Most of my testing is taking place after the fact and during my off time, and very soon we will begin using them during our weekly training drills.

In the mean time, I've been using a few to map and assess the damage a day or two after the event. I have been speaking to NFIRS and firehouse.com about using drone-created imagery for our fire reports and investigations.

I do have one of the fixed wings set up with video and some low quality "night vision" and 2 5.8ghz receivers on the ground, but the quality is underwhelming. Once I am able to get the gimbal tracking dialed in for ROI monitoring in a loiter, I will look into upgrading the live feed quality and hopefully try to find some funding for a thermal camera. 

Thank you for looking. If there is some interest in progress and use, I'll try to keep the blog updated.

Wheat fire mapped 2 days later with a Phantom2

NIR and NDVI mapped 1 day later with a Pixhawk powered fixed wing, processed by agribotix.