By Justin Jaggers
MEMPHIS, TN (WMC) -
I want you, reader, to imagine something with me for a second.
Imagine that you’re driving at night; the streets are lit so you’re not struggling too hard to see. You’ve been driving for a little while, so you’re a little tired. Imagine all of the things going through your head with driving, directions, maintaining the right speed, etc.
Now, all of a sudden, in the middle of your drive, someone flashes bright lights directly at you. You struggle to adjust your eyes and can’t quite make out the road anymore. You react to this sudden distraction hoping that you are on the right side of the road.
Now imagine you’re doing this 1,500 feet in the air.
In these blog posts, I like to brag about having the best view of Memphis. 1,500 feet is the altitude we often maintain during our flights. This keeps us out of the way for airplanes and allows us to have a pretty good view of the city when we’re looking for breaking news scenes.
This week, we covered an unfortunate home invasion in the Hickory Hill area. While I was operating the camera controls and our pilot was working to maintain altitude, stay out of the way of airplanes coming to and from Memphis International Airport, and keeping the chopper safe, someone flashed a laser pointer directly into our helicopter. This wasn’t a one-time thing either; for thirty minutes, we had a green laser pointing into our cockpit.
The problem with pointing a laser is that it’s not small. Sure, when you’re pointing it at something across the room, it appears to be a point. But, when you point it at an object far away, the point becomes much bigger. When you point it at a flying object, that point can easily shine into someone’s eye and cover up his or her entire field of vision in that eye. That’s not good for, say, a helicopter pilot responsible for a helicopter, its equipment, and two people’s safety.
If you’ve ever had a laser pointed at your eye, it’s not fun. If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky considering the potential vision loss you can suffer from it. But imagine staring directly at the sun for more than ten seconds. After that laser beam travels over a 1,000 feet, that bright spot gets bigger and more painful.
Not only is pointing a laser or flashing a light at a helicopter a safety hazard for the crew inside, IT IS A FELONY. Punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000, shining lights and lasers at any aircraft can get you in some serious trouble.
In the past two days, there have been a little over two-dozen incidents where civilians on the ground were flashing lights or lasers at aircraft. Just this week, the helicopter crew for WABC-TV in New York had to track down an individual with their video camera for shining a laser into their cockpit. Each of these incidents could have caused a great amount of damage. Think about it, we don’t fly over unpopulated areas; we cover news.
The individual that was using his laser pointer on our helicopter created another issue. Our pilot has to report to the Memphis International Airport control tower that someone in the area is using a laser pointer. This forces the control tower to divert air traffic away from that area. That means that pilots have to maneuver and waste fuel in order to take a safer route because of one person. Had this person been closer to a runway at the airport, he might have shut down an entire runway.
I’m sure you know that WMC Action News 5 doesn’t have the only helicopter in town. Memphis Police and Hospital Wing are running operations every day. We also have several military aircraft that come through here. So, if you hear one of these choppers in the air, don’t shine a light or a laser at them. Even if you didn’t cause a crash, you still have a great chance of interrupting what they’re trying to do.
If you see Chopper 5 in the air, please take a photo and post it on our social media pages. But please, don’t use a flash.
- Source: http://www.wbrc.com
No comments:
Post a Comment