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Wyoming Fire Chief calls on public for ‘common sense’ at emergency scenes
Wyoming Fire Chief Jesse Milligan is sounding an alarm about drone usage at emergency sites after a drone hovered near a crash last week, forcing an ambulance helicopter to delay takeoff.
Milligan and his team were called to assist in the crash that occurred Monday, Nov. 30, when a 29-year-old man from Inver Grove Heights rolled his vehicle just north of the Highway 8 exit on Highway 61. Milligan’s team was charged with the task of finding and setting up a landing zone for a Life Link helicopter, which they did at the parking lot of Maranatha Church. Milligan said everything leading up to the departure of the helicopter had gone well, and the pilot was set to take off.
“All of our guys backed away, and we were waiting for them to take off. One of my firefighters radioed in, ‘We have a drone out here to the west,’” Milligan said.
He looked up to find a light hovering just over Highway 61 right by Maranatha Church. Both Milligan and his sergeant had to radio to the pilot to warn him of the drone and then watched the drone as it traveled further west.
“That thing was right in their flight path,” Milligan said. “It’s tough to judge, because it was dark out, how high up it was, but I’d assume it was above the power lines. And you got a helicopter with carbon-fiber blades that could shatter and hit one of those drones and crash.”
Milligan said he understands people’s natural curiosity but added that most people don’t recognize they’re not legally supposed to see certain things, and it also puts the patient in harm’s way.
“My assumption is that this was strictly a curiosity-driven thing. People see helicopters and go, ‘I have this; let’s go see what we can see,’” Milligan said.
But for the helicopter pilots and emergency response teams, it’s yet another worry in trying to get a patient to safety.
“We try to give these helicopters the clearest and cleanest landing zone as we can. They have enough to worry about, with power lines and streets and trees and wind gusts and things of that nature. They don’t need to worry about having another piece of equipment in the air that shouldn’t be in the air.”
So Milligan put out a plea on the Wyoming Fire Department’s Facebook page asking people to not use drones near emergency scenes.
“People are just going to put them up in the air and see what’s going on, and they don’t understand the consequences of what’s going on,” Milligan said.
He added that drones have been utilized to help in certain emergency situations, and they have done so as an emergency response team, but he emphasized the need to keep them out of the air unless it’s under a coordinated response with a command structure. Otherwise, it can become a detriment, even including accidental circumstances when people lose sight of and crash their drones.
“Not only do I have to worry about cars hitting my firefighters, but now I have to worry about drones falling out of the sky because they lose sight of them, and I know that’s a pretty far-fetched sort of thing, but it is something now that could become a concern, especially on large-scale stuff where people see the freeway is shut down, and go ‘Let’s see what’s going on,’” Milligan said.
The owner and user of the drone was never determined, and even if the Police Department did track down the user, prosecution wouldn’t be likely because the user was likely within legal rights. However, Milligan did say it’s a good opportunity to inform others.
“As long as they’re used in coordinating with instant command, they’re a valuable tool for public safety to use. It’s when people take it upon themselves to utilize them for their own purposes on incident scenes like that where it can become a detriment.”