IntelliHub – by JG VibesA volunteer group who was helping in the rescue efforts with the Colorado flood have been forced by FEMA to stop and go home. FEMA even threatened the group with arrest when they wanted to carry on their efforts anyway.
Tech Dirt reported that:
A local company, Falcon UAV, makers of special drones which are built for the government, approved by the FAA, and specialize in using GPS and cameras to generate highly accurate maps, started helping to map the damage with those drones. It was basically making very useful, near real-time maps showing the floods. You’d think that would be useful to, say, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency in charge of helping to coordinate the response to the floods. Instead, FEMA ordered the drones grounded or it would have people from Falcon UAV arrested.[1]
On their website, the company provided the following statement:
Early Saturday morning Falcon UAV was heading up to Lyons to complete a damage assessment mapping flight when we received a call from our Boulder EOC point of contact who notified us that FEMA had taken over operations and our request to fly drones was not only denied but more specifically we were told by FEMA that anyone flying drones would be arrested. Not being one to bow to federal bureaucrats we still went up to Lyons to do a site survey for how we can conduct a mission in the near future to provide an adequate damage assessment to this storm raveged community.
While we were up there we noticed that Civil Air Patrol and private aircraft were authorized to fly over the small town tucked into the base of Rockies. Unfortunately due to the high terrain around Lyons and large turn radius of manned aircraft they were flying well out of a useful visual range and didn’t employ cameras or live video feed to support the recovery effort. Meanwhile we were grounded on the Lyons high school football field with two Falcons that could have mapped the entire town in less than 30 minutes with another few hours to process the data providing a near real time map of the entire town.
Falcon UAV would like to thank the Boulder County EOC and specifically Allen Bishop and Michael Chard (while they were running operations) for their common sense approach to drone operations, working to coordinate the airspace, as well as embracing this technology to help support the recovery effort. In contrast we are very disappointed in FEMAs response to actively prevent the use of UAVs and drone technology when these services were offered for free and at a time when manned helicopters could be used for more critical missions such as evacuations and high mountain search and rescues in inaccessible communities.
To our fellow Colordoans, we understand the recovery efforts are still ongoing and will be followed by a long period of damage assessment. If we can provide volunteer aerial video, photography, or mapping services to any of the affected communities please contact us directly at 303-903-4571.[2]
This week we also reported that residents near Colorado are reporting that the recent flood has taken out multiple fracking sites, releasing toxic chemicals.[3]
Sources:
[1] FEMA Grounds Private Drones That Were Helping To Map Boulder Floods, Threatens To Arrest Operators – Tech Dirt
[2] Falcon UAV Supports Colorado Flooding Until Grounded by FEMA – Falcon UAV
[3] Colorado Flood Creates Fracking Chemical Spill : Report – Intellihub
Writer Bio:
JG Vibes is an Intellihub.com investigative journalist, staff writer and editor. He is also the author of “Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance”, an 87 chapter e-book and is an artist with an established record label. Find him on his Facebook.
For media inquires, interviews, questions or suggestions for this author, email: vibes@intellihub.com or telephone: (347) 759-6075.
http://intellihub.com/2013/09/18/fema-asks-volunteers-colorado-flood-stop-go-home/
Looks like Katrina all over again.
FEMAs job is to finish hurting the victims.
I look for the time when survivors will be shot by FEMA
because they took care of them selves and ignored FEMAs demands.
“We had to kill the survivors to save them”.
FEMA official.
Telling people to go home? Why don’t they (FEMA) go home? No one wants them and no one asked for their help.
I guess this is why they didn’t want news coverage on all this. Don’t want to show the bad side of FEMA and their harsh tactics. I guess they knew they would be coming.
The people of Colorado better be armed and prepared, for if it is anything like Hurricane Katrina or even Sandy, FEMA will be coming for their guns as well, and bashing their doors down, all to make sure that they are OK, of course. They will do this even when they tell them FEMA they are fine because, after all, FEMA are DHS/UN troops in disguise and they need to see for themselves and the people can’t tell them no.
These bastards won’t stop until the people gang up in their neighborhoods and escort them out by force if necessary. No one asked them to come and no one wants them. I sure as hell wouldn’t it.
There were two volunteers from the Eau Claire/Chippewa Falls Wi. area that just left a svolunteers yesterday morning to help there…… I can see CAMP FEMA starting up – hell, camp fema has already started up there and people don`t even see it yet. 🙁 ………. Does any one know what they have done with all of those inmates that are in jail and in prison, I kind of wonder what has happened to them guys as we never ever hear of what happened to them guys – just wondering about that.