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FEMA Grounds Private Drones That Were Helping To Map Boulder Floods

Posted by Unknown on from the we-don't-know-what-we're-doing-but-we'll-arrest-you dept.

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.

1 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That's because we have a big US Defense Drones by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Except that's not what happened. from TFA:

    On Thursday afternoon while all National Guard aircraft were grounded due to weather Falcon UAV was proud to have been the only aircraft that was able to take flight to support the flood efforts in Lyons.

    So nothing was flying that day. Except for the drones.

    Just as Falcon UAV was off to another damage assessment in Lyons, Colorado we were requested to standdown for National Guard helicopters now supporting evacuation efforts.

    So they stopped flying due to this request.

    Enter FEMA.......

    Early Saturday morning Falcon UAV was heading up to Lyons to complete a damage assessment mapping flight when we received a call from our Boulder EOC point of contact who notified us that FEMA had taken over operations and our request to fly drones was not only denied but more specifically we were told by FEMA that anyone flying drones would be arrested. Not being one to bow to federal bureaucrats we still went up to Lyons to do a site survey for how we can conduct a mission in the near future to provide an adequate damage assessment to this storm raveged community.

    While we were up there we noticed that Civil Air Patrol and private aircraft were authorized to fly over the small town tucked into the base of Rockies. Unfortunately due to the high terrain around Lyons and large turn radius of manned aircraft they were flying well out of a useful visual range and didn't employ cameras or live video feed to support the recovery effort. Meanwhile we were grounded on the Lyons high school football field with two Falcons that could have mapped the entire town in less than 30 minutes with another few hours to process the data providing a near real time map of the entire town.

    So helicopters were not the issue. The CAP as well as civilians had planes in the air. Do you really think the national guard would have wanted civilians in the air if they were conducting helicopter flights? If FEMA would have had any intelligence they would have given them the 30 minutes to image the area. This had nothing to do with helicopter safety. It was some ass at FEMA on a power trip and not wanting to look bad because they couldn't have done this. Or best case, who ever made the decision at FEMA didn't want to be held accountable if something went wrong.