Oh for fuck’s sake. In San Francisco, if there is an extremely large fire, news helicopters will often be hovering overhead which are not only 100x louder than a drone, but have people onboard. You going to spray them with your hose too because they’re too loud?
You do not need to rescue the drone in case it falls. It won’t die of smoke inhalation. It actually prevents people from having to get closer and gawk because they have a better view of the fire from the drone camera than they would from standing across the street. I doubt very much you could even hear the thing over a fire hose running or a heavy blaze. You’re just being a grumpy asshole.
In the article, the owner made a point of calling out the dollar amount of the drone.
In a Facebook post, Thompson (seen at left) noted that, “My second take off the camera did not record so it look’s like they destroyed a $2,200.00 drone.” He accused the firemen of misconduct for trying to “blow my drone out of the sky with the fire hose for filming the fire.”
In my opinion, the drone gets really close to the fire, and the firefighters just give it a little squirt to get it out of the way. None of the firefighters’ squirts are prolonged- they’re 2-second bursts of water, and none after the first are really that close to the drone. And the guy flying the drone didn’t get the message at all, as he proceeded to then fly the drone directly over the smoldering fire scene. Had the drone stopped working and fallen, it could have potentially injured someone at the scene.
This felt like a gray area where the drone was in the way of the firefighters doing their job, and I don’t think their actions were out of line.
Christ almighty, the apologists in this thread. There was no reason but pure assholery to try to bring down that drone, all the baseless hand-wringing bullshit about interfering aside. Smacks of people cheering cops stomping iphones because they’re too close to a crime scene. Public air space, in no way representing a threat or actual distraction anymore than pedestrians at the property line or news copters. Just because you can conceive of situations where drones could come too close or interfere in some way doesn’t give the public servant the right to unilaterally destroy private property when there’s no evidence, at all, of that happening. Show me the law the drone operator broke to justify that kind of overreach.
I was with you at the first sentence, but then was surprised that you thought it was the firefighters who were in the wrong rather than the guy harassing the firefighters with the drone. I reviewed the video, and there were still crew working in a burning house when the guy was taking the drone over the heads of working firefighters. I think you expect firefighters to be technophiles who should be able to readily gauge the risks of the copter flying close to and over them, but that’s a totally unreasonable thing to assume. They were still in a highly dangerous situation and were being harassed by a toy helicopter. The person flying the toy helicopter was acting very passive-aggressive/entitled and wasn’t communicating with them in person, and it’s totally unreasonable to expect the fire crew to find them while they are putting out a fire. So they communicated with about the only way they had available. This is not really like a cops for smashing a phone, since this is a toy helicopter buzzing firefighters who you shouldn’t expect to be technophiles, and would likely draw the assumption that its dangerous (right or wrong). The camera operator was irresponsible here in not communicating, the firefighters had limited communication options open due to the toy copter operator not being present. The assumptions that the firefighters would know the cost of the toy copter or be sure whether water would damage it are also not warranted. The drone operator was so far in the wrong in buzzing the firefighters that their response seemed fairly measured, they looked like they were just firing quick warning shots to tell the guy to back off, and the toy helicopter pilot looked like he just didn’t get the message. If they were trying to destroy it they would have opened the hose much wider and kept the stream going until the thing was down or long gone. There might be applicable laws that the pilot was breaking (someone elsewhere said the FCC has specific rules for areas over a fire, and there could be local ordinances about entering an area where emergency response is working, though I’m not sure if that’s the case), but that’s peripheral to the fact that the pilot took the thing in way too close and was effectively harassing firefighters. If you want to gawk at fires, get a telephoto instead of a wide-angle and shoot from a long distance - that’s what news choppers do.
I think your characterization of the drone operator already suggests a bias; the operator wasn’t “buzzing” the firefighters, nor was he “harassing” them - both of those terms suggest his intent was to irritate, distract or interfere with their work. He was operating his ROV with the aim of capturing the details of the fire and the work of the firemen, perhaps for his own interest or the interest of others (we call the latter “news”). Obviously he got close - arguably too close. The firefighters became irritated and felt harassed, and they were distracted from their work. But all of those are reactions the firefighters are responsible for, and were not the intent of the operator. There’s a difference between being irritating and someone being irritated.
All that said I do think there should be limits on operating drones, even in the case of observing public employees doing things like fighting fire and crime; they should stay a reasonable distance away, and should not approach or fly directly over people’s heads (or in this case the active fire). There is just too much risk for people on the ground otherwise.
So, I guess they don’t like being “spied on” while doing their jobs. Except how is this different than if neighbors in a nearby apartment building were watching from their windows? Would they train the hoses on the apartment building?
Firefighters are allowed great leeway when it comes to getting their equipment in place to fight a fire. If your car is in front of a hydrant, they will shove it aside and are not responsible for damage.
If you walk up to an active fire scene, they are allowed to ask you to leave and can even have the police arrest you if you don’t. But guess what… They are not allowed to hose down bystanders for making too much noise. How is an ROV any different?
I don’t think this is about being “spied on.” If you watch the video prior to the jump, they ignored it for a long time. Then the drone flew above the firefighter’s heads at a few points. When it was staying clear they were ignoring it, when it was over the space they were working in they started dissuading it from hanging around which I think is fair. If the drone operator was present they could have told him to back it off, but he wasn’t, so they had limited ability to request he back up. They hit it with light bursts like they were trying to tell the operator to back the thing off and didn’t open up a torrent and nail it until it was down, which they easily could have done. Given the situation I think it’s reasonable to not want a drone directly over their work area (the wide-angle makes perspective deceptive, but it was pretty low at some points as well as over their heads) and they were limited in what they could do to communicate since the operator wasn’t present.
