Mike Eaton, a United States Forest Service Aviation Officer, was on an "air attack" mission when they encountered the drone.
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SAN BERNARDINO - As if four years of drought, thousands of acres of decades-old brush and more than 25,000 acres up in smoke weren’t enough for entrenched fire crews, Southern California’s first major wildfire of the year brought a man-made hazard to the skies that could have cost lives: Drones.
Firefighters battling the massive Lake Fire deep in the San Bernardino Mountains found themselves waging war Thursday against the remote-controlled flying machines, in this case civilian drones that halted aerial fire-suppression efforts on Wednesday and contributed to the spread of the fire and threatened lives, officials said.
“We got law enforcement out there. If it’s launched again, we’ll be on you,” said Mike Eaton, forest aviation officer for the U.S. Forest Service and air tactical group supervisor on the Lake Fire, during a news conference at the U.S. Forest Service Air Tanker Base in San Bernardino.
Eaton said the orange or red drone with a 3-to-4-foot wingspan cut between two planes, flying at elevations of 12,500 feet and 11,500 feet, at 5:35 p.m. Wednesday. The drone was flying at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, he said.
One air tanker was tailing the two planes and preparing to drop retardant near the eastern flank of the fire while another tanker orbited above, preparing for a second drop, when the drone forced the pilots to terminate the mission, Eaton said.
But only three of the four planes were grounded, while the fourth stayed in the air in search of the drone and its operator, Eaton said.
“We wanted to continue monitoring the situation,” Eaton said. “We were hoping to find the source (of the drone).”
While returning to the tanker base at San Bernardino International Airport, the pilots spotted a second, rotor-blade drone hovering above Heaps Peaks, in Lake Arrowhead, at an elevation of 700 feet — far above the 400-foot altitude restriction for drones, Eaton said.
Wednesday’s drone encounter in the San Bernardino Mountains forced the air tanker pilots to jettison a total of about 2,000 gallons of retardant at a cost of roughly $15,000, U.S. Forest Service spokesman John Miller said. It also forced the grounding of three aircraft, including two air tankers preparing to drop retardant along the eastern flank of the fire.
“More importantly, it could’ve killed everybody in the air,” Miller said at the news conference, which was held specifically to address the drone situation.
And it wasn’t just the pilots in the air who were imperiled, he said.
“The purpose of today is to try to drive the message home to the American public that this is a serious life-safety threat, to not only our pilots and crews in the air but to firefighters and residents on the ground,” Miller said.
Authorities were looking for the person responsible for operating the drone that grounded firefighters.
“We’re working closely with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to try to determine where these (drones) came from and who was operating them,” Miller said. “One of the things we’re asking from the public is if they did see anything, definitely to give us a call or give the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s (Department) a call, and then we’ll take it from there.”
He said the biggest message authorities were trying to convey to drone hobbyists is to stay out of restricted airspace whenever there’s a wildland fire or law enforcement activity occurring.
“We want to reinforce the message to the hobbyists out there that they have to think before they fly, and if they fly, we can’t,” Miller said.
“We all have seen the rapid growth in the use of these things for a multitude of different uses. It’s something that a couple of years ago we didn’t have to deal with.”
Donold Baligad, a 37-year-old Yucca Valley resident and drone enthusiast who has been capturing video footage of the Lake Fire on his Yuneec Q500 rotor-blade drone, says he is always mindful of what he is doing and tries to keep his aircraft out of harm’s way.
“In certain situations, such as when a fire is going on, I can understand when somebody’s got a job to do,” Baligad said. “I don’t want my drone to be ran into by another aircraft, or somebody to be in danger by my stupidity.”
He said his motivation to fly his drone over the fire is the perspective it offers from its video camera.
“I actually got back from vacation up north and the first day that fire started, got it up in the air,” Baligad said. “Who else can take a photo at 500 feet of anything at all? It puts a view of something in a new perspective.”
Of Wednesday’s encounter with firefighting planes, he said: “I am not the guy.’’
Eaton said drones will likely continue to be an issue for public safety officials as their use proliferates.
“There’s a lot of people buying them, and there’s a lot of people flying them,” Eaton said, adding that drones are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and people can fly them now for longer durations and at higher altitudes.
He said drones are an unnecessary, and potentially life-threatening, distraction for firefighters and law enforcement officials.
“The pilots need to be able to focus on flying the aircraft. We’ve got to watch for power lines and other planes,” Eaton said. “Now, all of a sudden, we have a moving hazard that we don’t know where it’s going to appear and when it’s going to appear. We just can’t plan for it, and they’ll pop up at the worst instant.”
Though Wednesday marked the first time firefighters in San Bernardino County encountered drones in their airspace, the unmanned aerial vehicles have surfaced during other wildland fires.
In April, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources enacted rules requiring that drones be kept at least 5 miles from active fire zones.
The agency enacted that rule to avoid collisions because drones were flying at the same height as firefighting helicopters.
And in July 2014, the pilot of an unmanned aircraft filming the Sand Fire, in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Sacramento was told cease his flight. Authorities said the flight was a potential danger to firefighting planes.
Federal Aviation Administration regulations on model aircraft and drones put a flight ceiling on the machines at 400 feet, with a weight limit at 55 pounds.
The regulations also require notification when drones are to be flown less than 5 miles from an airport. And they must be operated in accordance with a “community-based” set of safety guidelines.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department does not use drones as part of its own firefighting arsenal.
Nor has it had an incident with drones interfering with its firefighting efforts, said Randall Wright, a spokesman.
“It is one of the new technologies we will be monitoring,” Wright said.
The San Bernardino National Forest does not use drones in a firefighting role either, a spokesman said.
Experts have already begun monitoring the situation, given the growing number of clashes between the technology and real-life efforts such as fighting fires.
Drone technology will continue to evolve with new uses that will create safety and privacy issues — something lawmakers will need to address, said Dan Nabel, interim director of the Intellectual Property & Technology Law Clinic at the USC Gould School of Law.
Technologies exist so that aircraft could send out a signal to shut off drones if they approach too closely, said Vincent Nestler, a professor of Information and Decision Sciences at Cal State San Bernardino.
These beacons, which would “drop drones out of the sky,” could be placed on emergency service aircraft and helicopters — or all aircraft and helicopters for that matter, said Nestler, who has been tinkering with drones for more than decade.
He uses them to teach a cybersecurity class at the Cal State campus.
Jason Jeffery, a Long Beach-based flight instructor and pilot, said that when flying into the Long Beach airport, he dips as low as 200 feet above houses.
From his standpoint, the 400-foot ceiling for unmanned aerial vehicles is too high.
“There needs to be more regulations,” Jeffrey said. And there should be mandatory training for future amateur drone pilots, he said.
Just as most states require hunters to complete a hunter safety course before purchasing a hunting license, prospective hobby drone purchasers should be required to take a course and pass an exam, he said.
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