My drones save lives — but the FCC wants to take them away 

When someone is lost in the wilderness, time is of the essence. A few minutes can mean the difference between life and death for a hiker who wanders off the trail or a snowmobiler who doesn’t make it back — particularly at night, when temperatures plummet.  

Drones have been a game-changer for my team at Weber County Search and Rescue here in Utah, but unfortunately, a proposal under consideration in Washington, could cut off our ability to buy them, and hurt search and rescue teams like mine all across the country.  

Here in the mountains, drones have fundamentally transformed the way we conduct rescues. We save more lives and get rescuers back home to their families faster and safer than ever before, thanks to this new technology.

Two years ago, a snowboarder went missing in North Fork, off the trail, after dark. As ice started to form on his skin, our team launched a drone with a thermal camera. We had eyes on him in just 10 minutes, compared to the hours it would have taken ground teams searching in the dark or to get a helicopter up in the air.

I estimate that my team alone has saved between 25 and 30 lives in situations just like this, and we have cut our average search time from four and a half hours to less than one hour. We have also been able to do it with limited resources. A helicopter can cost millions of dollars — and that’s just to buy the aircraft, not even factoring in the cost for crew, fuel or having it........

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