Activity by US drone operators were critical in saving a trio of lives in recent days, including a youth in Colorado’s whose DJI craft spotted an otherwise hidden vehicle flipped in a sinkhole over the weekend.
Those aerial outings on Friday and Saturday added more evidence to the ways drones can be beneficial to daily life – and life itself – above and beyond the familiar, practical uses in business and public service applications. In both of those unrelated incidents, the elevated perspective of UAVs, and revealing images improved onboard tech provided, resulted in accident victims being rescued from otherwise fatal situations.
The first of those occurred Friday near the town of Sacred Heart, about 115 miles west of Minneapolis, MN, where a police drone was used to locate a man who’d collapsed on railroad tracks – just as, it was then discovered, a speeding train approached just two miles away. Quick calls to the line operator spared the would-be victim (and locomotive driver) what otherwise would have been a horrid outcome.
Credit for that rescue goes to the local Renville Sheriff’s department, whose drone found the stranded man after its units responded to a 911 call reporting his rolled car had burst into flames. Shock and injuries had apparently caused the wandering driver to collapse on the train tracks about a mile away from the accident.
Using an infrared imaging sensor aboard their drone in the early dawn hours, Renville Sheriff staff located the stranded victim and quickly contacted the railroad operator to halt a train headed for that very spot.
“Here’s one of those ‘Holy buckets! That could have been really, really bad!’ stories,” the department said of the incident on its Facebook page. ”This is yet another example of excellent teamwork, this time including the Sacred Heart Fire Department and others, in not giving up and making sure everyone is safe! Great job!”
Less than 24 hours later, a drone flown by a teen pilot in the rural Denver Weld County suburb spotted a car upside-down in a sinkhole as it slowly filled with water from an adjacent creek. That sighting, too, generated a fast call for help that allowed the victims to be rescued before the six-inch pocket of air they drew breath from closed entirely.
Serendipity – as well as great camera resolution on his DJI drone – allowed 18-year-old Josh Logue to identify the otherwise obscured vehicle that had flipped into the sinkhole. Curious to see the effects of recent heavy rains in the area, Logue had been overflying little-used, dirt-packed Weld County Road 2 when something caught his eye in a shot of a hole that had opened beside a drainage ditch.
Continued zooming, and eventual in-person checking, revealed it as overturned car whose low-slung position in the deep sinkhole was impossible to pick up without an elevated perspective – greatly reducing the odds of any rare passing autos stopping to look in and call for help.
For that reason, Logue’s neighbor and Denver firefighter Ryan Nuanes believes the final outcome would have been tragic if the teen and his drone hadn’t happened to venture by.
“This had the potential for the emergency to get worse because my concern was that the water was going to… fill it up,” Nuanes told local TV channel Denver7, before noting how what started out a leisure flight turned into a first responder mission. “Young man buys his drone, that’s his hobby, he just happens to be in the right place at the right time, and we’re able to see this car from somewhere around two miles away.”
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