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FEMA Grounds Private Drones That Were Helping To Map Boulder Floods
First time accepted submitter MrMagooAZ writes "An interesting article about a questionable reaction by FEMA in response to the flooding in Colorado. It seems a small firm was working free of charge with County officials to use drones to map the area and provide near-real-time maps of the flood damage. When FEMA took control of operations one of their first acts appears to have been to not only ground the drones, but threaten the operators. 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help you?'"
The drone model in question has permits from the FAA to be flown around even. The drones were replaced with manned craft that, due to the terrain, where unable to fly low enough to make useful maps.
.. as is individual efforts and coming together in crisis..Technology *is* powerful so of course individuals can't use it, no matter if it is a time of community crisis or not.
Can we stop referring to anything that is remotely controlled as a drone?
It was Colorado. Wasn't there a town that was talking about selling drone hunting licenses. The last thing they need are people shooting into the air.
Yes, your little, puny drones are no match for our US Defense Contractor drones that have a staff of thousands and bases all over the world. Trust us, we're much more capable of doing this job once we get the emergency congressional appropriations bill through and sign a new contract with the firm to load the special cameras we should be able to start mapping in about two years. By then we'll have this situation well in hand.
"Every Nation gets the government it deserves" - Joseph de Maistre
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
This "The drone model in question has permits from the FAA to be flown around even." mad my head hurt reading it even.
I don't remember when FEMA last responded promptly and appropriately to a disaster.
Wait... yes I do. Never.
Speculation on my part...
There are a large number of military helicopters operating in the area carrying relief supplies and evacuating people and all sorts of other activities. They can get on the radio and tell other (human) traffic in the area to get out of the way. I'm betting this drone can't respond to such verbal requests.
So if I was FEMA and I was tasked with coordinating all of these helicopter flights I might also say no to any drones I wasn't positive wouldn't be accidentally running into a helicopter full of evacuees.
I'm curious if there is a current NOTAM requiring special clearance to fly, or to obey extra rules in the area (like a specific radio frequency). If there is and the drone isn't following them, it is in violation.
If it is not in the written procedure STOP IT NOW!!!!
Seriously. They have a procedure they have to go through and follow to the letter. There is no room for innovation or individual thinking when it comes to Federal agencies. You deviate from written procedure you get written up or lose your job.
I have run into it enough times in action to know this was probably the case.
The Lunatick, Carpe Corpus!
One of the things about most of Colorado is that the people that live there experience privacy in their homes and land that is unknown in places like urban Maryland or New York.
As a policy, i am completely cool with maintaining that privacy against an influx of civilian, largely un-regulatable (as opposed to unregulated) drone activity. No thanks!
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Dear Mr. President,
As you are the Chief Executive, you can give orders to FEMA. Please order FEMA to stop being idiots and accept the free help.
Thank you.
Or rather Fema was going to have many national guard, army,and civilian aircraft flying about and did not want to worry about drone collisions.
But hey maybe the OP is correct and they where just being stupid. Your choice.
While it may sound boneheaded, the reality is that FEMA has a plan; even if it is using "outdated" tech--live pilots flying around. Their concerns are not irrelevant: flying objects they have no control/coordination of, and potential impact that can have on their piloted craft. When FEMA is called in, they become responsible. They are the ones everyone is going to scream at if things don't happen exactly the way we hope. If there are problems with inter-operation of drones with piloted craft FEMA would be skewered. Of course they'll be skewered because they aren't using drones as part of their SOP. But then again, when FEMA asks for money to update themselves and their SOP (for instance, so they can add drones to their toolset) the taxpayers scream bloody murder...
That statement about manned aircraft not being suitable for mapping was brain-torturing nonsense.
They've been used for mapping for generations and you can even make useful maps from _orbit_.
i thought drones were bad, i guess i missed the memo...
Beside overspend, run up deficits, and generally behave according to the Peter Principle? The federal government is a Dilbert cartoon.
Corporatism != Free Market
The reality here is someone with some authority was an idiot. This is getting spun as "evil fema shut down the little nice drone maker" which clearly isn't accurate at all. It wasn't FEMA that did this, it was a guy who works at FEMA. I very much doubt the W. Craig Fugate ordered this, nor any of his staff. It was some idiot that works there without the knowledge of his superiors (although I bet they know now...). Also, he didn't just shut down the drone guy, this guy at FEMA is also clearly stepping on the toes of all the local authorities already on the scene.
I'm not saying the correct response here isn't to make it into a story, or to be upset about how this was handled. But the anger shouldn't be directed against the agency, it should be directed against the individual who made this call. I know big governmental agencies are faceless organizations, but it is nothing but a collection of people, and it's actions are those of the people it employees. If you want change, then demand change of the people and you'll get change of an organization.
Never trust Page industries.
I don't know if you are joking or not... some people really do think like this, despite pictures of people on their roof waiting for a Federal helicopter to pick them up.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Despite living in the 21st century, FEMA's mandate is still to ensure the continuation of America's culture in the event of nuclear war (the Russkies, remember?) These days they're just doing whatever they can, trying to look necessary so no one notices they need to be dis-banded and replaced with people not born into the cold war.
we are fema you do as we say. stop surviving and doing things better than us. give up your pets and guns then go live in our disease filled camps while we loot your goods.
Was anyone expecting FEMA to just suddenly pull its head out of its ass? There weren't any real consequences imposed after their abortion of a performance in Louisiana so why would they do anything differently? Until we hold those fuckers directly, and personally, accountable for their actions we aren't going to see any changes. Lock up the director and some of the managers for 5 years for contributing to the deaths and injuries of hundreds of people and maybe we'll see some intelligent work being done over there.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
And what happens if those people really were more capable of helping than the government which is threatening arrest? After all, trying to rescue someone is not quite the same as actually rescuing someone.
A little bit of context. Rescue operations were then ongoing, in fact what is now deemed the largest aerial rescue operation since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. More than 700 people were evacuated by air.
The rescue operations also included the town of Lyons, Colorado which is the same location where the UAVs were operating.
It is not inconceivable given the scale of the rescue operations that the UAVs were impeding the helicopters. And to use your analogy, the helicopters were actively 'rescuing someone' compared to UAVs which were... mapping. You can draw your own conclusions which is more important.
Federal resources are appreciated in an emergency. They save lives. Federal bullying is not appreciated in an emergency. It can jeopardize lives. There are examples of them doing it right, and of them doing it wrong. This UAV incident seems to be the latter.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
They still have people living in mold-infested trailers in New Orleans.
I'm from the government and I'm here to help you
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! The scariest sentence in the entire English language! Aaaaaaaa....!
(OMG... on an unrelated note, I know what I'm going to this Halloween's costume party as: Uncle Sam! At this point, scarier than any zombie, vampire, "terrorist", axe-muderer, kkk/neo-nazi thug, or tax collector!)
Phil's Hobby Shop appears to get away with calling them radio control airplanes and helicopters.
They do not care about other people. They do not care about results. They do care about their dominance, hence this massively unethical decision which places them squarely in the "evil" corner.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I have some knowledge of these things. This smacks of a publicity grab by the manufacture of a small, cheap, and not very capable RC airplane with an autopilot and a camera. Info from their website - video range 1-3 miles, endurance 1 hour. If the video range is 1-3 miles, really, what good is it? Helicopters can cover way more ground faster.
It says they have an FAA approved COA. This is a little misleading. Only government agencies are granted COAs. Civilian organizations need to apply for an STC. The Mesa County Sheriffs office has a COA to operate the Facon UAV in Mesa County. COAs are very specific. My guess is that they were operating outside the limits of their COA.
The website doesn't say they have a transponder, and since it's pretty much a sales brochure, I would guess it doesn't. Same with a 2-way voice link. So my guess is that somebody wisely decided that having a non-squawking, non-talking flight hazard buzzing around a bunch of manned aircraft that are actually doing useful work like rescuing people was probably a bad idea. Looking at the pictures it doesn't look like it has an anti-collision strobe either.
Because anything that the people do that's ad-hoc, effective and lower in cost threatens not only the government but the consultants and planning-boards and corporations that get the big tax bucks we pay. The System routing around potential damage
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
What federal helicopters? The only helicopters I have seen in the news are Army helicopters (UH-60s & CH-47s) which means they are National Guard and therefore state, not federal.
... doesn't mean that that is what is getting use. In fact, what you see on TV is mostly stock video.
The helicopters we see LIVE (not on TV) are from the Air Force, which has multiple bases here ... including the AF Academy.
Apparently, other planes with lower priority missions were allowed to fly in these areas. Perhaps FEMA already had mapping capability in place. Else it does seem a bit foolish.
They are static they cannot tell you as examples; where survivors are clusters, which way the channel is shifting, assess damage to roads, assess damage to utilities, drop supplies, relay messages, extract survivors, etc. So GET THOSE POS OUT OF MY WAY SO I CAN DO MY JOB!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yes, it's a simple English head code. Any school boy could catch it.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This is proof that the flooding was an inside job.
The drone model in question has permits from the FAA to be flown around even.
Must be read in a Jackie Mason voice to be appreciated.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'd consider a drone to be an unmanned aircraft capable of following a pre-programmed flight path(not necessarily doing so at the time), and operating beyond the line of sight of the operator(s) while returning data such as, but not limited to, video and other imagery.
I'm sure it can use some work, but that's the definition I'll go by. It keeps basic RC aircraft from counting because they're generally tethered to line of sight.
I don't read AC A human right
As the AC mentioned, resolution matters. Orbital mapping is incredibly good for the distance, but if you're flying lower you can get far more detail - even if your camera system is far cheaper.
A plane flying low for survey purposes can give you detail down to around the centimeter vs meter+ for satellite. It might not be enough to identify somebody in a crowd, but it's enough to tell a heck of a lot more. It's also relatively cheap and quick.
I don't read AC A human right
I've tried to read through this thread, and 2 things impress the hell out of me.
1. The number of posts which are nothing more than duplicates, more than 10 of each scattered through the thread, stop it slashdot!
2. The number of folks who are apologists for FEMA's past performances. This is the same runaway agency that has freshly constructed around 200 so called 'camps' which can contain, behind tall human proof fences, several thousand people per 'camp'.
This is the same runaway agency that authorized LE to shoot to kill, anyone in N.O. who armed themselves against the looters, people who were doing the only thing they knew how to do to survive when there was little food and NO potable water. With no help from FEMA other than confiscating weapons, they interfered with the survival of some of those who had the foresight to prepare themselves and survive, while dooming to a neglected or drowning death, a considerable number of folks in the many hospitals and care homes. They blocked the roads leaving, preventing the many who had their own transportation from getting the hell of of Dodge. That damned sure doesn't fit this old farts definition of a relief agency, but it sure reminds me of Hitler's Gestapo, rounding up the Jews.
This is the same agency that left nearly 100k folks locked in the superdome with no food, water, or sanitation. For several days .
If anything, Katrina taught me that FEMA , under the ultimate direction of Bush 2, has well exceeded the level of uselessness usually attributed to the teats on a board hog.
It is decade's past time to cut our loses with FEMA, it has turned into an agency with a black budget that will never be audited, and whose sole directive is to survive by sucking the public money trough dry. Other than helping to arrange overpriced loans after Sandy, they have done so little to earn their keep that any corporations board of directors would have pulled the plug on them 20 or more years back.
However, I do think we need an agency to give instant aid in situations such as Katrina, Sandy, and now this unprecedented 500 year flooding. But FEMA is not that agency when they refuse to make use of today's technology. As presently operated, it isn't capable of doing useful work when needed. Stop the bleeding. If done quickly enough, the patient, us, might even survive.
Yes, I fly them, and work with the engineers who design them. These things, and more specifically, the people who advocate for them, are a menace. They have no semblance of airworthiness, are not designed to be safe in the airspace, and are generally (the small ones) flown by people who have neither the training nor the operating procedures to safely fly them. There's a reason the global hawk costs $200M and the reaper $60M. That because more than a million engineering hours has been put into each to make them airworthy. The small remote control toys have no redundancy of design in structure, programming, hardware architecture, propulsion or datalinks, and generally flown by people who have no concept of how many people they can hurt by launching them up at people who are properly using the airspace.
When the weather's bad, aviation doesn't stop, you just don't see it. Pilots fly in the clouds every day, throughout the world. No UAV has a safety system that will allow it to safely fly near other aircraft, much less ones that the operator can't see. Do you just casually assume that nobody was flying that day with SWIR or SAR imagers Both of those will punch through the clouds and can be safely flown. Would be a damn shame to kill them. Geography of that area, in particular, limits IFR flight of helicopters, but in many large area disasters, helicopters are flying in and out of the clouds on IFR flight plans. Would be really bad to take out a life flight helicopter because your little quadcopter doesn't have robust communications links.
after reading the last line of the summary.
FEMA are over paid loosers
They couldnt save a fish from drowning.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
yeeeeeeeeha mcoy.
Damn raskals, shoot em up yeh ah hehe he hee.
Yo bo, lets burn the damn pig pen.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
anyone who has worked in emergency response such as oil and chemical spill remediation or crisis reporting knows that the Fematrons are some of the most worthless, inept, clownish, and insipid of that verminous species known as Federal 'workers' (and i use the term 'worker' *very* loosely)
In terms of deaths with in 30 days, we shall see.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Federal resources are appreciated in an emergency. They save lives. Federal bullying is not appreciated in an emergency. It can jeopardize lives. There are examples of them doing it right, and of them doing it wrong. This UAV incident seems to be the latter.
Unless there are regulations about federal agencies using drones/UAVs on the American public. It would seem that a mentality of the ends justifying the means is not really a good practice for the government to use.
So just another bureaucratic failure of asset management. Stuck on doing stuff in a certain way that they don't end up doing what needs to be done. By the time they get around to doing anything, a bit over half the people will have evacuated themselves already and those that are stuck like chuck will be wondering what the hell is taking so long.
I take it this Colorado flooding situation is going to be like another Hurricane Katrina?
It might simply be that they don't want to be caught doing whatever it is that they are doing on camera. I seem to recall something about confiscating guns during Katrina.....
I could understand it if it was a temporary hold while FEMAs contractor did their mapping and maybe some altitude restrictions. But a ban with threats of arrest? It makes absolutely no sense, more data is generally a good thing. Sadly this looks like another bureaucratic snafu, they don't like the fact that someone is doing it faster and cheaper than they are (I should note though that I doubt their claims of higher accuracy are correct) so they're making up excuses to keep it out.
It's a simple airspace management issue. A UAV with only a camera looking down, beyond line of sight of its operator, cannot look around in order to avoid other aircraft operating in the same airspace. Therefore, they are airborne FOD waiting to happen.
Safety of flight.
FEMA does not have the authority to take over management of the skies, not even during time of emergency. They must still operate by request through the FAA.
But, the Law has never stopped the Obama administration from simply ruling be decree, so whatev...
And in Katrina, they were mostly Coast Guard.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
FUCKING DRONES! Destroy them!!! Shoot the fuckers down! Isn't that why everyone was so excited about the drone hunting licenses? Get to fucking work you assholes.
When did unelected bureaucrats get the power of law? Seems like a pretty big loophole in our system.
This is like a hot young man and a chaste young girl. One inch and it just makes him want more. FEMA seems to be power mad. We do need emergency relief in many situations but how did that translate into a martial like ability to command everyone else? Frankly that is nuts!
As to the drone vs. RC label I think some of these devices are actually a blend of both. Computer chips maintaining the basics of flight while an RC operator determines direction and activity seems to be the case. The quad copters can be easy to operate simply because some functions are autonomous. Even a Cruise missile can get to target and strike without a human operator but there is still a protection in that it can be disabled if a strike is cancelled by an RC command. So it is a complete drone at times but not always.
It's no longer, " 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help you", which was laughable even amongst its supporters.
Now it's the slightly more terrifying 'I'm from the government* and I am the ONLY one who is allowed help you".
An idea which they enforce with far more efficiency. After all, an independent, self-sufficient populace might get ideas otherwise. Why, they might even come up with the notion that the government is beholden to its people rather than the other way around!
I suppose the idea of working with these guys never occurred to FEMA? It sounds like they were providing useful data.
* (or one of its overpaid contractors)
Because they grounded the local helicopters
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The vast majority of NG funding is federal.
I would tell them to Fuck Off. FEMA has no authority over private citizens, and for those that do not want any help, FEMA better leave them alone.
If government goons don't want to cause any problems, then they will stay clear.
A guy was telling me earlier that his neighbors decided to inform the authorities that under no circumstances will they tolerate "authorities" trying to confiscate people's guns, or search homes. And if they were to do that, then those "authorities" would come under military attack on sight.
Clearly people have had enough of government meddling.
It fully agree with your post except for:
The UAV where operating, while the local government was in change, mostly while other aircraft where grounded because of bad weather. The result being that they did not impede anything.
The local government was able to coordinate with Falcon UAV. That is they where not operating rouge but working closely together with government until FEMA took over operations.
Apparently the Lyons Colorado "mission" would have taken 30 min. If you can spare 30 min for an accurate map of the situation, I think it may be worth iti; especially if you pick a time of bad weather where you can't do anything useful anyway. (Let them standby until notice... whatever) Unfortunately I am not there so I don't know.
Yeah, those news choppers make great rescue machines.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Unless there are regulations about federal agencies using drones/UAVs on the American public.
There are.
You can't legally fly a unmanned aircraft remotely OR autonomously without visual contact from the ground by the person responsible for the aircraft. A camera in the aircraft does not count. The 'responsible person' can't change while its in the air. It is against federal aviation regulations.
These guys apparently had a waiver from the FAA to do it however, which is good to know because I want such waiver for my own uses and was under the impression that the FAA was not yet granting any waivers for this purpose to civilians. Its something they've been trying to figure out how to deal with for a couple years now, and its a non-trivial problem.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Maintaining government power and authority is far more important (to the government) than getting things done or helping the citizenry.
Boulder is not a high tech incubation region. Denver's high-tech region is south and east of the city.
Boulder is an incubation region for dirty hippies, far-leftists, organic Rastafarians, and art history majors.
Know it.
FEMA came in waving their ray guns, deploying their blackest of black ops, and flashing their cryptozoology psyops all around to cover up a surfacing of the lavamen/magmen from deep in the planet. Clearly they don't want private citizens getting footage of the government men trying to contain, understand, and quell the uprising.
Duh.
http://i.imgur.com/fVgoIGN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UbkOHXN.gif
http://i.imgur.com/FbgR7Kl.jpg
This was shown to be not so decidedly stupid request.. http://www.9news.com/rss/story.aspx?storyid=355477 They were asked not to fly the drone for risk of the evacuation helicopters essentially. The drone people seem to have left out that part.
Actually, during an emergency, resources, no matter their source, save lives. There's no requirement such resources come from the Federal government.
For more local disasters, local and state governments should provide their own emergency management from local funds based on local needs, while other local and state governments and the Federal government should provide supporting roles. For example, Florida would likely need to maintain greater local resources for disaster, due to frequent hurricanes, than Idaho. Local government and citizens will know the area better and have the best interest of the local area.
How can contract pilots and surveyors make money off of the government when others are willing to do the same job for free?
The contract companies gave a lot of money to their government representatives to get that job.
Note that these planes are big(compared to drones) followed a predictable pattern, and can be directly communicated with, they probably also operated at a higher altitude. Since the helicopters would focus mainly on low level recon and rescue.
I wonder to what degree this was really "don't remap what FEMA already decreed mapped" ... which sometimes has scant correlation between terrain and what's declared flood hazard. Frex, mountaintops with no surface water have been declared flood hazard areas under FEMA's new maps (and certain banks, in partnerships beneficial to certain insurance firms, have gleefully glommed onto these maps and used them to inflict extra costs on mortgage holders... see the Chase Bank lawsuit).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?