# Drone assists in river rescue



## mania (Oct 21, 2003)

Drone assists in river rescue - CNN Video


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## bigben (Oct 3, 2010)

some cool shots i guess. shoulda held onto that tube!!!
i like to think that if i can tube something, i can swim it. just for kicks, or to go help someone stuck on a rock. why call the po-po for something i can probly get done with a quick swim

i do like the angle of them drone shots tho

i wonder if i can fly a drone to take pics of the custies whilst steering the boat down this class 2 shit??... 
sounds like a fun experiment!! surely someone's tried it already, right???


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## rivervibe (Apr 24, 2007)

How about throwing him a line and swinging him to shore? This rescue doesn't make any sense.


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## OregonRafter (Jan 30, 2013)

rivervibe said:


> How about throwing him a line and swinging him to shore? This rescue doesn't make any sense.


The kid is sitting on a rock with a now delivered PFD. He doesn't appear to be injured or in distress. There is nothing on fire and no reason to not formulate the safest plan weighing the risks vs benefits. I understand what you are saying about "just get him off that rock easily and as soon as possible". But why take the chance of putting him back in the water if you don't have to? At that point the scene is stable. What if you throw him your rope and tell him to jump in and he can't hold on while he's in the water? Then throw him a second line, but what if he can't hold on to that one? 

To you it may look like a frustratingly slow rescue is taking place. To these guys they are looking at a stable scene and performing an extrication as safely as possible, which certainly does add complexity and time to the operation, but also diminishes most risk to the victem.


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## Swank (Jun 20, 2009)

That was quite the daring rescue scenario. Thank God the drone was there.


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## Learch (Jul 12, 2010)

I was thinking the same thing about all of the other ways they could have gotten them off the rock, but it looked like a good place to test out the drone in a real world case. At some point that drone could be used in a much more critical rescue and they will have a little more flight time and knowledge of its capabilities.


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## racerx (Sep 25, 2007)

rivervibe said:


> How about throwing him a line and swinging him to shore? This rescue doesn't make any sense.


ditto


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## rivervibe (Apr 24, 2007)

OregonRafter said:


> The kid is sitting on a rock with a now delivered PFD. He doesn't appear to be injured or in distress. There is nothing on fire and no reason to not formulate the safest plan weighing the risks vs benefits. I understand what you are saying about "just get him off that rock easily and as soon as possible". But why take the chance of putting him back in the water if you don't have to? At that point the scene is stable. What if you throw him your rope and tell him to jump in and he can't hold on while he's in the water? Then throw him a second line, but what if he can't hold on to that one?
> 
> To you it may look like a frustratingly slow rescue is taking place. To these guys they are looking at a stable scene and performing an extrication as safely as possible, which certainly does add complexity and time to the operation, but also diminishes most risk to the victem.


While I certainly appreciate that point of view (I am a very safety concerned person) I also know that the scene can become exponentially more hazardous to any or all persons involved with each line strung across the river. I fully agree that such an approach is entirely appropriate in some situations. However, from looking at this scene, it looks to be low water that isn't moving very fast or steep. To me, the added time and hazard of making such a scene more complex than it needs to be probably isn't worth the risk, or time. I say time because without appropriate river gear, the subject could quickly be facing hypothermia.

All that said, any way of getting a pfd to a person in need is a huge win.


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## BoilermakerU (Mar 13, 2009)

bigben said:


> ...i wonder if i can fly a drone to take pics of the custies whilst steering the boat down this class 2 shit??...
> sounds like a fun experiment!! surely someone's tried it already, right???


ACtually, you can now. They make drones with a wearable device so it follows you wherever you go!


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## OregonRafter (Jan 30, 2013)

If


rivervibe said:


> While I certainly appreciate that point of view (I am a very safety concerned person) I also know that the scene can become exponentially more hazardous to any or all persons involved with each line strung across the river. I fully agree that such an approach is entirely appropriate in some situations. However, from looking at this scene, it looks to be low water that isn't moving very fast or steep. To me, the added time and hazard of making such a scene more complex than it needs to be probably isn't worth the risk, or time. I say time because without appropriate river gear, the subject could quickly be facing hypothermia.
> 
> All that said, any way of getting a pfd to a person in need is a huge win.


Yep. And that is the difference in thought process for kayak and rafter types vs how a SRT team approaches something like this. If this was a river trip and he was a customer, sure throw him a rope and get him to shore so you can continue with the trip or get them with another raft. It'd probably work 99 out of 100 times. If this is your kayak buddy you're going to tell him to sack up and swim to shore. 

But these guys were tubers. I know nothing about this river but I bet that it is a mostly mellow run above and these kids probably didn't know what to expect when this rapid caught them off guard. They're already potentially cold, wet, and scared. And who knows if they can even help themselves. If simply throwing them a rope fails then the rescuers have just made the problem worse. The SRT team is not going to ask the victims to voluntarily get back in the water. To them those consequences could make the scene more complicated and dangerous then stretching a system across the river. That is why SRT team evaluates risks vs benefits differently. (Either that or maybe they're just a bunch of rescue dorks that want a chance to play with their toys).


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## DoStep (Jun 26, 2012)

if a person in need can't help their own rescue by throw rope, how have rescuers made the problem worse? And I'm not sure how having a person wait until rescuers can get them a PFD before having them re enter the water is a bad rescue strategy. Swimming that section looks to have consequences. I wouldn't be so quick to criticize this rescue effort without having been there.

If all involved can get the person to safety before S and R is called, then all the better, just try not to kill the kid with a hasty rescue. But once they are brought in, for better or worse, it's a different animal. That's just the way it is in a litigious society.


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## ppine (Jul 1, 2015)

Ditto
I did a winter canoe trip on the lower Colorado River a couple of years ago. We were out there with the wild donkeys, coyotes, owls and otters and could see no lights at night. Then a drone showed up and followed us for 2 days. It was probably US Border Patrol, but very intrusive and not appreciated in the middle of nowhere.


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## OregonRafter (Jan 30, 2013)

DoStep said:


> if a person in need can't help their own rescue by throw rope, how have rescuers made the problem worse? And I'm not sure how having a person wait until rescuers can get them a PFD before having them re enter the water is a bad rescue strategy. Swimming that section looks to have consequences. I wouldn't be so quick to criticize this rescue effort without having been there.
> 
> If all involved can get the person to safety before S and R is called, then all the better, just try not to kill the kid with a hasty rescue. But once they are brought in, for better or worse, it's a different animal. That's just the way it is in a litigious society.


My point was that if the SRT team throws the kid a rope and asks him to get back into the water to pendulum to shore, but the kid for whatever reason can't hold on. Now the victim is swimming downstream through the rapids. The SRT team would have made the problem worse by asking the kids to get back into the water but unable to extricate him. That is not a likely strategy a SRT team is going to risk.


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## ppine (Jul 1, 2015)

Good luck getting SAR to most parts of the West. You are on your own and have the responsibility to rescue yourselves.


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## hojo (Jun 26, 2008)

Arm-chairing at it's finest. While most of us, with boats and a crew, could have effected a very different rescue, would you seriously have just paddled out with a pfd and a helmet and said to the kid "just swim it, we'll pick you up at the bottom" or, "we'll swing you to shore, but if you come off the line (and not one of you can ever say with certainty the swimmer will stay on the line) we'll just get you at the bottom." I've seen, first hand, how terrible some of you (the royal you) are with a rope in the easiest of circumstances. With no boats for assistance, they did what they could and it seemed fine. Had the kid been bleeding profusely and nonresponse, yeah, a drone with a pfd may have been a bad decision.


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## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

OregonRafter said:


> To you it may look like a frustratingly slow rescue is taking place. To these guys they are looking at a stable scene and performing an extrication as safely as possible, which certainly does add complexity and time to the operation, but also diminishes most risk to the victem.


The process is slow because the fire dept. guys are not just thinking about the kid on the rock, they're obeying the first rule of a rescue - not to endanger oneself needlessly. These guys deal with getting injured people out of wrecked cars, going into burning buildings, and a whole lot of other dangerous situations every day. Every day those firemen are on the job, they're dealing with calculated risks. They know that if they start taking shortcuts in one aspect of their job, it's a slippery slope to a place where the law of probability will eventually catch up to either them or the victim.

Also, whitewater rescue is probably less than 5% of what they do over the course of a year and certainly not their day in and day out fare - it's just one more thing they do when called upon.

To put it another way, who wants to risk getting hurt _on the job_ getting a tuber off a rock in the middle of the river? Or botching the rescue and hurting the victim (especially with the cameras rolling).

-AH


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