Search and rescue are carried out most frequently at National Park Service, especially at Grand Canyon. But These Drones Program has made it easy for the rescue team in finding the hikers or tourists who lost there way back.
“We started this drone program up Last Fall in 2016”, said Justin Jager, Inter agency Aviation Officer with Grand Canyon National park. He runs the aviation program there, and said that this drones help them to search the canyons with out risking many lives.
Jager has said, “Sending someone on rope, or doing a low, slow flight, we can send the UA’S over, find the person and make a determination if they need assistance at that point”. “Or if it is a obviously dead person, we can hold off on the operation until there is a safer time to go down and retrieve the body”.
Grand Canyon can be a dangerous place if one is not careful, one in every 4,00,000 visitors die, mostly due to dehydration or heat and there are plenty of falls too.
“There are lots of falls over canyon edge”, said Jager. “So that’s probably the main use of these drones”. Since start of the program no one was found alive yet, but recently drone helped to find dead body of a hiker who was apparently swept away.
“We flew the entire thing over a few days”, said Brian stone, an NPS pilot. “We viewed it live as we were doing it, but it was better to come back to a TV, and view the HD footage off the Go-pro”.
Generally they use a 3DR solo drone with a Go-pro camera, because it is small enough to hike miles with.
“We can keep it in a back pack and go for a hike with it”, said Stone.
Just like any commercial Drone users, NPS pilot must also comply with FAA regulations.
Stone said, “It gives us more information”, It’s not going to replace a helicopter, it’s just a way to give us more information on a place we really can’t see.
These drones are used only for emergencies only, and private drone flying is not allowed within park limits, jager has said that there is a safe issue involved. He also said that NPS is evaluating new drones that could help in future missions.
By A.s
