FEMA Grounds Private Drones That Were Helping To Map Boulder Floods 356
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.
Freedom in America is a Thing of the Past (Score:2, Insightful)
.. 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.
Not autonomous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we stop referring to anything that is remotely controlled as a drone?
Typical government thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:That's because we have a big US Defense Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Could this be due to the helicopter operations? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What Do You Expect? It's FEMA. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Could this be due to the helicopter operations? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that's what the article says, but you might have to know some things about FAA regs for them to make sense.
"It has public safety flight approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly in some parts of Colorado."
They most likely have a conditional certificate to fly only in particular areas of low traffic/population for an experimental drone. That's similar to having a pilots license (approval to fly a plane), or even a drivers license (approval to drive a car).
NOTAM's, or NOTice to AirMen are temporary restrictions on ALL flight operators. Think of them as a construction detour in your car, or a bridge washed out barricade. A common NOTAM might be that a runway is closed for resurfacing, or that a chuck of airspace is blocked off for an air show.
So while they may have general approval to fly, the NOTAM cancels that for the specific area covered. Most likely the FAA has delegated to FEMA the ability to control all flights in this box as they coordinate SAR, Search and Rescue operations.
So to extend my car analogy, it's like there's a washed out bridge from a flood, and they put up a barricade across the road while they tried to recuse someone from the flood waters and these people simply drove around the barricade and said "we're here to help!". The answer was get back on the other side of the barricade, or be arrested.
Re:Not autonomous? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can we stop referring to anything that is remotely controlled as a drone?
No. Otherwise we'll have to get into all sorts of grey areas. Is it a drone if it follows a pre-programmed flight path? is it a drone if it can be sent waypoints "on the fly"? At some point or another the unit is remotely controlled.
Re:What Do You Expect? It's FEMA. (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Reality... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not autonomous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. What's your noun to define, in general, a remote controlled unmanned vehicle?
We'll start a campaign to have your word replace "drone" in the Oxford English, Merriam Webster, Collins dictionaries immediately.
Re:That's because we have a big US Defense Drones (Score:3, Insightful)
The best way to clear airspace is to... clear the airspace.
No one wants a UAV thru their helecopter windscreen.
Re:Not autonomous? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure. What's your noun to define, in general, a remote controlled unmanned vehicle?
Toy helicopter.
UAVs could have been hampering rescue operations (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [yahoo.com]. 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.
Re:Perfect example of Federal Government fucking u (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's because we have a big US Defense Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Could this be due to the helicopter operations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I understand why you libertarians are all up in arms, but think how MUCH worse it would be if some helicopter goes to land and its rotors get jacked up chopping through some quad copter that nobody saw was there... suddenly drones would require a license or some other horrible restrictions.
All you knee jerking reactionaries blow right past the safety issues that you assume won't happen. What's more important, knowing where the water is or getting the people out safely? At first glance I was annoyed the government was putting in seemingly silly restrictions, but after the first mention of SA R helicopter landings i understood perfectly the rationale. You can't reasonably control the independent drone operators, so you can't be sure there won't be a collision that could KILL people. Yeah, I'll ground the drones.
Now, civilian cooperation and outreach to create registered or trained disaster drone operators that can follow the safety guidelines and will ground their drones on command or when out of communication is the logical next step. Don't knee jerk into uselessness, use that brain to find a better way :)
AC cause I'm a lazy bastard who never logs in
Re:Not autonomous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since there's a perfectly good word with an identical meaning, use "unmanned aircraft" for any without a human on board. Us "RC" to mean remotely controlled. And use "drone" to mean weaponized or self guided.
Re:Not autonomous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. What's your noun to define, in general, a remote controlled unmanned vehicle?
We'll start a campaign to have your word replace "drone" in the Oxford English, Merriam Webster, Collins dictionaries immediately.
ROV
The taxonomy isn't actually that difficult to understand:
Drone (Unmanned vehicle)
ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle)
RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicle)
UAV (Unmanned Ariel Vehicle)
AV (Autonomous Vehicle)
Technically, these things are Drones, but that's about the least specific thing you could call them.
Re:Not autonomous? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because otherwise, it's simply an RC aircraft. They've been around for 30+ years. "Drones" are new, "RC" is old. But the meanings are the same, depending on who you are talking to.
+1
Since there's a perfectly good word with an identical meaning, use "unmanned aircraft" for any without a human on board. Use "RC" to mean remotely controlled. And use "drone" to mean weaponized or self guided.
I'm of the opinion that "Drone" should refer to autonomous (flying) vehicle. The question of it having a weapons or surveillance payload is irrelevant.
Re:Not autonomous? (Score:5, Insightful)
RC aircraft have been around for 70 years. I saw a 1930 add for the equipment while going through an old magazine.
The difference between RC and drone is simple a drone is a very remotely piloted craft. where as an RC craft must be kept in visual range of the pilot. (ie a drone is flown miles from the pilot)
New policy (Score:4, Insightful)
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)