Photo from video by: Mike Thomas
Snow Canyon State Park, Utah, a drone helped rappel a
hurt hiker more than 400 feet during a daring rescue in Snow Canyon State Park
Sunday.
It’s the first time the Washington County Search and
Rescue team used a drone this way, but likely won’t be the last.
Search crews helped a 65-year-old woman who got hurt
hiking on the top of Island in the Sky around noon. She had fallen several feet
and could not put weight on her foot.
To bring her down, they’d need to be creative.
“We were trying some different ideas,” Darrell Cashin
said.
The problem? It would take four men to carry up the rope
needed to rappel the woman down nearly 40 stories.
A special gun that launches the rope up fell about 100
feet short.
So they put 660 feet of twine on a drone and sent it up.
“We gave that a shot and it actually worked,” Cashin
said. “The canister was light enough for the drone to handle, didn’t have too
much wind and so we flew the drone all the way up to where the guys were
literally right to their hand. Disconnected that, flew the drone back down.”
At the bottom of the mountain, the twine was attached to
the main rope and was pulled up the bluff.
“They just rappelled her off down to there and we carried
her out,” Cashin said.
In December, a drone was used as a spotlight to help
rescuers see better in the dark while helping a lost hiker on the same
mountain.
The drones also help spot lost hikers, send messages and
transport small items such as a radio or bottle of water, according to Cashin.
“We are finding new ways to utilize them and find their
capabilities and limitations and new things we can do with them," Cashin
said.
Three other people who were with the injured woman also
rappelled down the bluff with the help of rescuers.
Has your SAR team found any new ways to utilize drones in
search and rescue, tell us about it in the comments?
We have used a drone in the past to ferry a small line across a river for a swiftwater rescue and then pull the main line across. It worked well on the wider rivers.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that is my video.... we do pretty much everything in the story...
ReplyDeleteIt seems it is the LEAST valuable for actual searching for subjects.
We use the lights for night time operations quite often.
We have used the speaker for communication with the subjects, but, that has been rare.
We have used it for scouting routes. Both routes for accessing the subjects, and looking at possible extraction routes.
But, it seems we use it the most for its transport capabilities. Instead of using the speaker, we can haul a radio to the subjects using a drop system. We have carried bottles of water. And, even carried medications to remote locations for EMS.
On the one in the story, our Line Gun fell 100 feet short of the top of the cliff. So, we used the drone to haul up the line gun twine. Then, pulled messenger cord and ropes and equipment the same as situations where we would have used the line gun in the past.
If you check out our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/WCSSAR/
There are lots of video clips from rescues from the drone.
Our team will fly mapping missions with drones of large areas to create a orthomosaic for situational awareness at the incident base.
ReplyDeleteWe have a drone team. Our last two finds were actually from the drone prior to the foot team going in.
ReplyDeleteAerial camera platform for mission planning, searching, voice broadcasts, spotlighting night operations, training images and video
ReplyDeleteOur county has a county-wide drone team made up of operators and aircraft from several local agencies. We can access this team and the various aircraft/operators if needed on calls. Thus far, we've mostly used it for scouting and "big picture" views on calls. There's an aircraft with FLIR capabilities available through that group as well. We were working on an aerial radio repeater setup prior to COVID, so hoping to get that more sorted once this is all over.
ReplyDeleteMy team very behind the curve, as our county attorney has be strongly against any drone ops or training beyond the point of reason. I have a 107 and a Mavic Pro, but am a total drone novice. I today started a demo of drone deploy and did a recon of my property just before lunch. My photos are still uploading. The upload and processing time as well as the lack of ability to follow terrain are glaring limitations for all the hype DD gets. Maybe someone more experienced can educate me otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI think they are being used to good effect have huge potential to do much more but I don't think we as a national community are quite "there" yet.
Snohomish co WA had some great stuff at ITRS last year - seemed like they have a lot of forward progress in this area.
Coast Guard are using it for maritime searches to supplement our helicopters for inland waters specifically
ReplyDelete