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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.
Can we stop referring to anything that is remotely controlled as a drone?
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.
I cheated and read the article. They WERE US Defense Contractor drones that FEMA shut down.
I cheated and read the article. They WERE US Defense Contractor drones that FEMA shut down.
That were replaced by manned aircraft that couldn't fly low enough to be as useful. So to summarize,: FEMA came in and replaced something that was probably cheaper, more effective, and safer with something that was more expensive, considerably more dangerous, and useless.
And we wonder why the government can't pass a budget, let alone one that lowers spending.
Success is not very news worthy. FEMA does pretty well on any number of smaller disasters, but more things go wrong in big disasters and just like the CDC, FEMA has become associated with 'bad things' and thus people tend to focus on the negative.
"FEMA does pretty well on any number of smaller disasters, but more things go wrong in big disasters..."
But see, that's the whole point. Their REASON FOR EXISTENCE is basically big disasters. If they can't do that well (and arguably, they have demonstrated that they can't), they should be disbanded and the money redistributed to the states, which would at least do no worse.
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.
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.
Here. Let me explain that to you with a diagram: http://i.imgur.com/nSD3ofw.gif
You'll note that they seem to do the poorest job in areas where people were told to evacuate, but didn't for whatever reason. I think there might be a connection.
I think there is a bigger connection between "FEMA not taking over an incident" and "Governor of state refusing to ask for aide from FEMA when it would have done the most good." You know, like three days before Katrina made landfall and everything could have been staged while the roads were still passable and stuff, instead of several days after and the police of a major city involved fled in panic.
Now, the company who is trying to make themselves look good has claimed that CAP didn't carry cameras or video. Yes, CAP has an entire ES qualification dealing with aerial photography (i.e., they were almost certainly carrying cameras) but are hindered in real time video by managing a data link of sufficient bandwidth. The FCC rules prohibit use of cell phones (and data) while airborne, so it's not just a case of slapping a cell data card in a laptop and firing off the data. That's not to say that GIIEP should be as stupidly complex as it is, however. Forcing all data through one military system with associated military level authentication and sucky bandwidth is a mistake, but the approved cell data cards are not generally available as far as I know.
Phil's Hobby Shop appears to get away with calling them radio control airplanes and helicopters.
This.
I honestly don't think FEMA came in and told them to leave just to be bossy. They are in charge of the area, and having drones flying around their airspace is just one more thing they have to worry about / deal with / be at risk of running into. Could this have been handled better? Yes. It sounds like the drones were providing a valuable service, and in hindsight it would probably make sense for FEMA to try to collaborate here.
The most likely scenario in my mind is that FEMA has a plan on how they will handle this situation. The plan comes from tons of experience with disaster relief. While these [don't call them] drones provide functionality that is useful, they do not know how to work them in with the things they know they have to do. If they take time to figure out how to leverage the option available they risk dropping the ball on issues that they know are time critical. And we all know how well that will go over in the press and popular opinion.
I think it is unfortunate that they were not able to be more flexible with their plan - obviously all plans have to react to the realities of the situation, so they have some flexibility, just not enough in this case. It will be interesting to see if they do a postmortem and add [don't call them] drones to their future response plans.
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.