The owner of a drone company, wanting to help rescuers in Colorado, was sending his drones up and back into the hills where people could not go, so as to help rescuers know which roads had been washed out and which were safe.
“”The transportation people were there because they wanted to know which roads were washed out. The emergency-response people were there because they wanted to know which roads needed to be closed and which houses were flooded.”
FEMA, it is said, wanted no part of that and ordered the guy to shut down the drones or face arrest.
According to an article in Popular Mechanics (source below) this “…was a perfect example of how small UAVs can be used in disaster response. Nevertheless, Miser, whose company sells drones for $15,000 to $55,000 to local and state agencies, as well as to the agriculture and oil and gas industries, soon found himself in hot water.
He was offering the service for free, as a good citizen. But that was not OK by FEMA.
For its part, no one at FEMA knows who issued that order.
“It makes sense to shut down the airspace during a disaster,” concedes Miser. “What was irritating was how they did it. All the helicopters were up in the mountains and canyons doing search and rescue. I was in the flatlands, where there was nobody else up in the air. They didn’t ask if I was a hobbyist or professional. They didn’t ask about my capabilities. They didn’t ask if I was taking live video or still shots. They just said no drone flights, or I’d be arrested.”
Of course taken to an extreme, an airspace crowded with drones under no coordinated control would and could pose a threat to official aircraft. But this wasn’t that. This was a guy with some drones offering to help.
Read more here.
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