{"id":69439,"date":"2017-06-29T22:05:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T04:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/drones-increasingly-interfere-with-aerial-firefighting-official-says\/"},"modified":"2017-06-30T04:05:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T04:05:58","slug":"drones-increasingly-interfere-with-aerial-firefighting-official-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/drones-increasingly-interfere-with-aerial-firefighting-official-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Drones increasingly interfere with aerial firefighting, official says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=af896033-1fa1-4d7e-89a8-47b00ec28df1&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1300\" height=\"731\" alt=\"A single engine air tanker drops its load of fire retardant high above the Lightner Creek Fire on Wednesday evening after a drone was reported flying in the area causing all air support to stop. The retardant was released at too high altitude to be useful.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A single engine air tanker drops its load of fire retardant high above the Lightner Creek Fire on Wednesday evening after a drone was reported flying in the area causing all air support to stop. The retardant was released at too high altitude to be useful.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Drones are an increasing problem at wildfires, and that proved true this week at the Lightner Creek Fire west of Durango.<\/p>\n<p>Air operations were grounded around sunset Wednesday because drones made it unsafe for pilots to fly, Chris Tipton, fire management officer for the U.S. Forest Service, said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Pilots can\u2019t see drones and they can get into a plane\u2019s engine or go through the windshield and harm the pilot, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The planes were ready to drop retardant on the section of the fire moving toward Durango when they were grounded, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Two planes had to jettison about 1,600 gallons of retardant worth between $8,000 and $10,000. One plane dropped it too high above the fire to do any good and another plane dropped it near the Durango-La Plata County Airport, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The Durango Police Department spoke with two people flying drones over the fire Wednesday night, La Plata County spokeswoman Megan Graham said.<\/p>\n<p>Evan Niccum was flying a drone in the Rockridge area and boy under 18 was flying a second drone; others also were reported in the area, she said.<\/p>\n<p>The police turned the information about the pilots over to the U.S. Forest Service, she said.<\/p>\n<p>While flying drones in a fire operations area is a federal crime, it is not unusual.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re seeing these problems happen more and more across the west and it\u2019s not getting any better, it\u2019s getting worse,\u201d Tipton said.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:mshinn@durangoherald.com\">mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>retardant uselessly discarded, planes grounded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,28,549,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-69439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-united-states-forest-service","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69439"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=69439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}