Cooler temps and humidity are helping to control the Buckley Draw fire outside of Provo, but the incident has seen a record number of illegal drones flying into temporary flight restricted areas or TFRs. That’s wasted tens of thousands of dollars and hours of lost time that should have been put toward fighting the fire.
As of Monday, the U.S. Forest Service reported a total of 22 drone intrusions into the TFRs. Twelve were reportable, meaning they grounded or forced aircraft to reroute. There was another reportable intrusion by a piloted private plane.
“To have 22 in less than a week is really unheard of in wildland fire,” said Sierra Hellstrom, public information officer for the Northern Utah Type 3 Incident Management Team. “But I think this will start to become more of the norm based on the work that we do and the availability of these drones on the internet or in most stores.”
Hellstrom said they’re lucky that no collisions have happened in the airspace near the Buckley Draw fire. She has seen collisions occur during other wildland fires, including one instance where a drone flew through a window, striking a pilot in the face.
“But at some point in time, our luck will run out, and we're going to lose a firefighter because people are being careless,” she said.
Hellstrom isn’t exactly sure why this wildfire is seeing more drone intrusions than any of the other fires the team has dealt with on the Wasatch Front. Part of it could be because it’s close to an urban area, and the fire is visible from the valley, but Hellstrom said when the team was at the Willard Peak fire in Ogden, there was only one drone intrusion that week.
The Federal Aviation Administration draws temporary flight restricted areas at the request of several agencies responding to a wildfire. People who want to fly drones or planes should check the FAA’s website for updated TFR information.
“We put them up when we need them, and we take them down when we don't,” said Eric Panebaker, forest aviation officer for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. “They're not things that we just leave up for days or weeks at a time if we're not operating in that area.”
When a drone is spotted, officials ground helicopters and send fixed-wing aircraft to fly 10 to 20 miles away and circle the area for at least 25 to 30 minutes, Panebaker explained.
“[Drones are] hard to see because they're so small, and unless we actually see that drone land and actually make contact with the drone operator, we have to assume that that aircraft could be in the air for the duration of its possible normal battery cycle,” he said.
Most commercial drones have a 15 to 20-minute battery life. Then, officials add a five to 10-minute buffer for extra safety. That all adds up to between six and a half to 11 hours when aircraft had to be grounded or rerouted at Buckley Draw.
And it’s difficult to know exactly how much money has been lost to drone intrusions because of the variety of aircraft in use, Panebaker said.
A single-engine air tanker can cost more than $2,000 per operating hour, while a larger tanker can cost as much as $20,000.
But Panebaker’s main concern is the safety of firefighters and the general public.
“Even a two-foot wingspan foam remote control airplane, if it flies into an engine of a single-engine helicopter and causes the engine to quit in the helicopter, it’d have to make either an emergency landing or, worst case scenario, crashes, and there's fatalities,” he said.
There are rules for a reason, Panebaker said, and even though people can’t see the aviation work going on over the ridge, it doesn’t mean the work isn’t happening.
“Because our pilots fly at a variety of different speeds, a variety of altitudes, they need to be able to operate anywhere within that TFR without having to concentrate on things that might be there,” he said. “People may think of their drones as a toy, but even a toy in the wrong place on an aircraft can have a catastrophic outcome.”
As drone popularity continues to grow, Hellstrom said local, state and federal agencies will have to continue to educate the public and work together to find solutions like new tracking technology.
“There's no picture worth a firefighter's life,” Hellstrom said.
