$75,000 Offered To Find Drone Operators Who Interfered With Firefighters

After three freestanding instances of drone pipe anchor firefighting travail , a Southern California county is puzzle serious about finding and punishing their operators . San Bernardino County Supervisors have extend a $ 75,000 payoff which they hope will tempt people to come forward with information about the quadcopters in question .

Drones have delay firefighting aircraft in three different San Bernardino County wildfires since mid - June , forcing planes to untimely drop their fire retardent and helicopters to remain grounded until the skies were open . On July 17 , five drones were in the air when firefighters started to mobilize against the North Fire and ended up delaying water - drop sweat by 20 second . Due to the delay , thefire jump the 15 Freewayand beganburning dozens of carsas their drivers operate to safety .

Inaddition to the rewards—$25,000 for each fire — a hotline is being set up for tips , which research worker hope will lead to prosecute at least one of the operators . At the very least this will probably scare the dirt out of other drone possessor so people wo n’t be unintelligent enough to do it again .

While copscan’t just shoot down a drone(it still counts as aircraft),legislation was introducedlast week which would permit first responders to disable drones that are in the means . Other laws are propose soaked penalty for drone operators , include fix it a Union offense to fly during wildfires that ’s punishable by five years in prison .

Obviously the multitude who were flying over the three firing in question would n’t be stupid enough to post their videos ( we hope ) , but there are actually mass of wildfire dawdler videos on YouTube . This one was edited sometime in the last week to assure viewers that the source shot it “ without step in ” and now contains a lengthy disclaimer telling other masses not to do what he did .

[ LA Times ]

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