Someone Flew a Drone Too Close to a Wildfire, Again

It happened again this week. On Thursday, firefighting crews battling the Bocco Fire, which has burned hundreds of acres in Colorado, had to stop their efforts when an unauthorized civilian drone flew into their airspace. Neither tankers nor helicopters could fly for an hour while firefighters waited for the drone to clear. “If you have aviation equipment moving quickly and they hit a drone, that’s going to cause significant damage and really be a safety issue for that pilot,” Steve Hall, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Land Management, told Denver 7 ABC. “[It’s] not a distraction anybody needs—whether they’re on the ground or in the air.” It’s not the first time that civilian drones have frustrated forest-fire fighters. In 2016 alone, unauthorized drone flights led firefighting crews to ground their aircraft at least 13 times, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The service initiated a public-outreach campaign to try to dissuade pilots. Their tagline: “If you fly, we can’t!” “Firefighting aircraft typical[ly] fly in smoky, windy, and turbulent conditions. Safety depends on knowing what other aircraft are operating in the airspace and where they are at all times. Consequently, their safety is compromised by the presence of a drone,” wrote Kaari Carpenter, who works in fire and aviation management for the service, at the time. She noted that drone pilots can face criminal charges and civil fines of up to $25,000 for flying near a fire. Fires are not the only natural hazard that attract drone pilots. Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered pilots not to fly uncrewed vehicles too close to the erupting Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island...MORE