By Michael Martinez, Paul Vercammen and Ben Brumfield, CNN
Of all the elements they must battle in a wildfire, firefighters face a new foe: drones operated by enthusiasts who presumably take close-up video of the disaster.
Five such "unmanned aircraft systems" prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas.
Helicopters couldn't drop water because five drones hovered over the blaze, creating hazards in smoky winds for a deadly midair disaster, officials said.
The North Fire torched 20 vehicles on Interstate 15 and incited panic among motorists who fled on foot on the freeway Friday. The wildfire continued to burn uncontrollably Saturday, scorching 3,500 acres with only 5% containment in San Bernardino County.
Drones hovering over wildfires is a new trend in California, and on Saturday, fire officials condemned the operators of "hobby drones," as officials labeled them. It was unclear Saturday whether authorities would launch an investigation into the five drones.
"Fortunately, there were no injuries or fatalities to report, but the 15 to 20 minutes that those helicopters were grounded meant that 15 to 20 minutes were lost that could have led to another water drop cycle, and that would have created a much safer environment and we would not have seen as many citizens running for their lives," said spokesman Eric Sherwin of the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
Full story here Drones cause a hazard
Comments
I find your faith in such imbecelic operators quite remarkable. Are really saying that people flying FPV in such circumstances have a clue if they are in the path of a helicopter.
And how do you know they are not flying Inspires, AD1s.
I am not arguing more about this study. By it's own admission it does not cover this circumstance. It is pointless to discuss it any more. IMHO.
Marc, Visual flight rules are to avoid and keep out of the way of manned aircraft. No one is flying their drones into helicopters.
I think it is unreasonable to stop someone from using their micro-drones to help themselves. We do not ban bicycles for a five mile zone around fires. We expect people and their bikes to keep out of the way of fire fighters.
The study points specifically analysed the risk of small UAV causing a serious aircraft accident. The study found that is very unlikely that a small UAV, under 3 lbs(1.5kg), would cause a fatal aircraft accident. There have been 10s of thousands of these under 3lb bird strikes recorded in the FAA data base since 1990. Only one fatal crash that appears to have been caused by a small bird.
Here is a link to the IEEE review of the study. The bottom line is that the study found that microdrones, like the DJI Phantom and 3DR Iris are not much of a hazard.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/smaller-d...
Ok, I was afraid I'd stir up a #### storm with that.
For those of you who failed to grasp the throw the book at the errant drone pilots part.
I was not excusing their actions - at all.
In fact, the unwashed, uneducated public is only going to start to understand their responsibilities by seeing a few of them getting tossed to the wolves.
That's - fine, I agree with that - anybody who intentionally or (more the case here carelessly or thoughtlessly) interferes with emergency services needs to be made an example of.
My point - here - is that emergency services continually has to respond to a wide variety of conditions and problems, quite often they do this without simply suspending their service.
Here (this is the second occurrence) they have chosen to immediately stop all further service until the "threat" has been abated.
Although, I am of course, completely second guessing them here, my take is that this response was possibly not warranted by the degree of the threat.
They take many other considerably more "threatening" threats in stride and continue in spite of them.
In all fairness, this is a new threat and the potential consequences are by no means well understood so a case could be made for 100% suspension on that basis.
Still, that is a very extreme reaction and does not appear (to me in any case) to be appropriate for the perceived degree of threat.
Clearly different people and different fire bosses would evaluate this according to their own perceptions.
Unfortunately, what happened in the first case was also the cessation of firefighting activities and that has now become the norm with the second case, which may well have been decided the same way at least partly as a result of the first case.
My feeling is that it is a bad precedent and is being handled this way not based on the scale of the actual threat, but based on a pervasive viewpoint that civilian drones (not directly under the control of the emergency services) are bad and that anything that can be done to get rid of them is a good thing.
I could be wrong and reading too much into this, but in the manned aircraft world we have already gotten a sizable group who simply want to see drones banned, viewing them as a threat to safety and to their jobs.
I am simply speaking to this issue and in no way support irresponsible drone flying.
Also re "virtually no threat" I will revise that to a "small threat", those big fire helicopters are pretty damn tough.
Once again this is in no way a vindication of those thoughtless boobs flying their multicopters in an emergency situation, it is just a call for a balanced response.
Best regards,
Gary
That study attached is not relevant here at all. Read it. Birds are not drawn to newsworthy events. And they are not made of CF. It deals more the the risk associated with random collisions at low altitude.
Here is a link to the UAS America Fund study that found that small drones, under 3 lbs pose little risk to aircraft
http://www.uasamericafund.com/assets/micro-uav-safety-analysis.pdf
Not deploying the helicopters was like having a fire department refuse to roll the fire trucks because people have been spotted riding bicycles in the area of the fire. In addition at this point anyone operating a small UAV is aware of the LOS operating rules of a UAV operator to stay under 400 ft and to avoid manned aircraft.
It's been my observation that in the case of these "drone tantrums", it's the air ops managers, not the pilots, who shut things down when someone hollers "DRONE!" The pilots willingly fly through flames, smoke and who knows what else to do their job. I find it ironic that the incident managers, where risk assessment is part of their job, fail so miserably when it comes to drones. They don't exhibit the same hysteria over large birds, and there are plenty of birds that can cause more damage to an aircraft than a Phantom.
Not sure what kind of evidence is needed to prove that a drone would endanger the pilots of a helicopter. Do you want to actually see it happen? You have to consider all factors...what if it is extremely distracting to the pilots...what if it does strike the tail rotor...2-3 pounds could take out a tail prop. It's not worth the risk and should be taken extremely seriously.
Forgot to mention.
Their poster looks great! And of course I and everyone should respect their requests. But, I think they are being extremists, possibly media whores. California loves drone news at the moment.
Agreed!
I was watching choppers deliver airconditioners on an active construction site yesterday. Foam and wood and any other construction materials light enough to be kicked up by the downdraft were flying through the air when the choppers were that low. They didn't care about any of it.
Birds are bigger than the toy drones people would likely be flying in those areas.
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