AV News: Search and Rescue Drones

Josh Missman didn’t have much time to practice flying his new drone before putting to good use. Missman, a deputy with the Kossuth County Sheriff's Department in Iowa, had only flown the department’s DJI Phantom 4 a handful of times in a two-month span. In late July, Missman used the drone to help find a man and his granddaughter stranded on a local river. Thomas Fitzpatrick’s boat got stuck on a logjam after he and his granddaughter went out on the Upper Des Moines River. He was able to call for rescue, but a ground search was difficult. That’s where Missman and his drone came in. Within three and a half minutes, he was able to locate the stranded boat and help others get to Fitzpatrick. “There were a couple guys on foot, but it was so thick and twisty and turny that it was taking forever to find them. They were blaring a handheld siren and they were able to talk to the guy on his cell phone. He could barely hear the siren to the north of him, so I knew where the guys were walking that if I flew the drone from them south, I’d eventually run into them." Missman hovered the drone high enough above the trees so other rescuers could see it. At some point in the process, Fitzpatrick suffered a heart attack. He was eventually airlifted to a nearby hospital, meaning the time the drone saved in the search could have been vital. “It’s anybody’s guess on that time frame there what would have happened, because as soon as they landed at the hospital, he was immediately in surgery.” The recent rescue in Iowa is just one of many examples of how drones have been used in search-and-rescue missions. In 2014, David Lesh was visiting his girlfriend’s family near Madison, Wisconsin and happened to bring his custom hobby drone. It’s a good thing he did, because Lesh used the drone to help find an elderly man who had been missing for 3 and a half days. Thanks to the drone, the man was found alive in a field that couldn’t be examined by the search team on the ground. “They said, ‘We don’t have much hope at this point that he’s still alive. He hasn’t had any food or water in over three days and it’s been crazy hot out. But if you guys want, there’s this one bean field that we hadn’t really been able to check because they don’t want to trample all the farmers’ beans.’” Lesh was shown an aerial map and was told where to search with his drone. After searching one area, he flew his drone toward another area -- and that’s when he saw 82-year-old Guillermo DeVenecia walking through a corn field. “It was very unexpected. Their job is search and rescue, and if they didn’t have much hope after 3 and a half days, I wasn’t expecting to find anything. I didn’t have much hope either. But I was happy to, if nothing else, make the family feel better about everything and have somebody else who cares and wants to lend a hand. I was happy to find a more practical use for my drone.” Similar success stories continue to pop up in the United States and all over the world. There are many ways for drone pilots to help. Sardrones.org is a volunteer network where pilots can use their drones to aid in search and rescue missions. The group’s Facebook page currently has more than 5,000 volunteers worldwide. Back in Iowa, Missman said his department has been contacted by numerous other local agencies about the use of drones in search and rescue missions. It appears the use of drones will only increase as a helpful tool for future rescues. “This is the goal, the reason why we bought it. We plan to use it for all sorts of different reasons. This one just happened to come up right away, and it worked out great for us.”

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