Law enforcement set up a perimeter around the area and waited until daybreak when the crooks walked out and were arrested. The drone had already helped recover an elderly woman who, suffering from dementia, had become lost since it was activated in July.
In that case, an incident command was set up, resources gathered, including the DJI Inspire 1 drone, and the search convened. A woman in the area spotted the drone and had seen the elderly woman nearby. Suspecting something was up, the woman called 911 and the lady was found within 30 minutes of the beginning of the search.
“Minus the drone, it would have been ground pounding — police, fire, volunteers on foot doing a grid pattern, said Todd Harmeson, deputy director of the Emergency Management Agency for Madison County. The area includes some unharvested cornfields, the wooded area and residential areas, and it was a nice sunny Sunday with “people everywhere.”
The drone will save money and resources for these types of incidents as well as accident reconstruction and during flooding, which occurs annually in the county. “To be able to put the UAV up in the sky to see potential hazards and damage assessments of bridges and culverts will save time and money and is a safety measure as well,” Harmeson said.
The county purchased the drone for $3,000 and it came with six batteries, two controllers, a charger and a case for storage. The FLIR was purchased in September for $10,000. “We were fortunate that the local budget was well supported by politics and that was able to move money, “Harmeson said.
Madison is a county of about 100,000 residents, but metro Indianapolis is far enough away that it doesn’t lend aviation support. And helicopters are pricey, costing about $2,500 an hour to fly. “The only support we have is with the Indiana State Police, and we are sharing those resources with 92 other counties,” Harmeson said.
The county had deployed drones before but without real-time imaging and without FLIR. It looked around the region at what others were using and this spring set the wheels in motion to garnering the Inspire 1. With the help of a local pilot staff got some training on FAA rules and regulations and found a local businessman who rented out things like cameras, lenses and drones. He agreed to help the agency and ended up supplying the Inspire 1.
