Drones rapidly becoming a nuisance

By Kevin Smith, San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Drones are getting a lot of attention in Southern California these days, but for all the wrong reasons.

Last week firefighters were battling the North Fire along the 15 Freeway when their efforts were hampered by five drones. Yep, you read that right, FIVE of ‘em were being flown in the area.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that flying a drone in a mountainous area where people are laboring to keep a brush fire under control might not be the best idea.

In fact, it might just be the worst idea.

Here’s the problem: These remote-controlled contraptions are extremely nimble, but they could easily collide with the rotor of a water-dropping helicopter or the engine of a fixed-wing aircraft. That’s all it would take to bring an aircraft down. This is the last thing firefighters need to be worrying about when they’re trying to corral a 3,500-acre blaze — in rough terrain, no less.

And the thing that’s especially irritating about all of this is that it’s not a one-time occurrence. It keeps on happening.

The Lake Fire in the San Bernardino Mountains was interrupted on its first day by a drone. That forced air tanker pilots to ditch about 2,000 gallons of fire retardant at a cost of $15,000.

Firefighting efforts at the Sterling Fire in late June were likewise interrupted when two drones were seen flying in the area, although one was later determined to be flying legally.

And lastly, the battle to contain a recent 54-acre fire in the Yucaipa Ridge area had to be halted when a private drone was spotted in the area.

So we have a definite pattern going here, and I think it could be boiled down to a couple simple equations: Brush fire + firefighters = good. Brush fire + drones = bad.

On a bigger scale, these incidents will likely slow the momentum to expand the use of drones for commercial purposes.

Amazon already has plans to use drones for package deliveries and the Federal Aviation Administration is also considering whether PrecisionHawk, a North Carolina-based company, should be allowed to use drones to survey crops in rural areas beyond the visual range of their operators.

Those kinds of uses make sense, although I’m not sure I would ever be desperate enough to have a pair of pants or a smart phone flown directly to my neighborhood via a drone.

The thing we have to watch out for are the crazies, the people who insist on flying these things when and where they want. Issues of privacy are obvious, but I’m also predicting that the more drones we see in the sky, the more accidents we’ll have.

And when you get right down to it, I’m not looking forward to seeing a bunch of tiny unmanned planes and helicopters up there. We Southern Californians already live in a world of traffic congestion, long lines and noise. And there are plenty of commercial and private aircraft already in flight. Do we really want to add clusters of small drones to the mix?

I don’t think so.

And we don’t need hobbyists flying them around when firefighters are battling brush fires.

I could drone on … but that’s about it.

http://www.sgvtribune.com/technology/20150727/drones-rapidly-becoming-a-nuisance