[GCARC] Colorado Flooding Response

[Tony]

To show you just how highly the government thinks of us hams, FEMA shut down the drones and threatened to arrest anyone flying one. See the following statement from the drone operator: 

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 ravaged 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. 

[...] We are very disappointed in FEMAs response to actively prevent the use of UAVs and drone technology when these services were offered for free and at a time when manned helicopters could be used for more critical missions such as evacuations and high mountain search and rescues in inaccessible communities 

  

Tony 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Tom Gorman" <tom.gorman2178 at gmail.com> 
To: gcarc at mailman.qth.net 
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 9:24:08 AM 
Subject: [GCARC] Colorado Flooding Response 

Amateur Radio ARES/RACES was on the NBC Network News last night in response 
to subject flooding. Video clip showed hams using 2 meter radios. 

The ARRL yesterday reported that these hams were also using approved drones 
equipped with Amateur Television for air to ground transmissions to allow 
Incident Command personnel to view affected areas. 

73, 
Tom, KE2ES 
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