Officials responding to the wildfires around Spokane, Washington, said that unauthorized drone flights had directly interfered with their firefighting operations, forcing aircraft out of the sky at a critical time. According to the officials, in the last couple of hours their air support units and air firefighting units had to be grounded because drones were flying in the zones from which they are restricted. They stressed that there is a specific zone where no drones at all are allowed to fly.
The officials described just how close the drones had come to the firefighting effort. They said there were four cases in which drones were directly in the path of firefighting apparatus operating from the air. Officials framed the incidents as an active disruption of firefighting efforts, coming at a moment when crews were battling fires that were still growing and needed all the help they could get.
As a result, the authorities said they had escalated the matter to federal regulators. According to the officials, the cases were referred to the Federal Aviation Administration for $100,000 fines each for being in the restricted zone. They said they were done playing games and done giving warnings on the issue, given the risk the flights posed to firefighting operations.
Officials also outlined the resources they had brought in to counter the drones. They said there was an FBI task force for counter-drone measures in place, along with a task force officer from Spokane County, and that they had equipment on hand to carry out counter-drone mitigation. Officials said they were taking the matter very seriously as the fires continued to burn.
The authorities said they were reaching out directly to those responsible for the flights. According to the officials, they were contacting several people, including media outlets, who were flying drones in the restricted area. They noted that there are proper channels to obtain authorizations to fly, adding that the public would not get them while media could sometimes be granted them, and urged operators to make sure their paperwork was in order and to stay out of the restricted zones.
Officials warned that the consequences could go beyond fines if the flights continued. They said the task force officers were federally deputized with the FBI and therefore had arrest authority from the federal government, and that there was potential for arrests or even larger financial penalties should the drone flights persist. They said they would exercise that authority if the situation kept happening.
The officials closed with an appeal to the community, framing the issue as a matter of safety for the crews on the front lines. They said that if an air crew came in and went down because it connected with a drone, that was simply not worth it, and they asked people to think carefully before putting anything in the sky. They also urged members of the public to alert law enforcement if they saw drones in a restricted space, so that emergency services would not be put at further risk.