When Hurricane Helene and Milton hit the Southeast US, they left a trail of devastation in their wake. Roads, homes, and chunks of towns were swept away by torrential floods. Thousands of residents were left without homes and forced to take refuge in community centers which were cut off from access to critical supplies and resources. One of those shelters, a senior center in Marion, North Carolina, has received a lifeline from an unlikely source. For a little over a week, a white, buzzing autonomous drone operated by Wing has been collecting prescription drugs, baby formula, and other critical resources from a nearby Walmart supercenter and airdropping them to the senior center.
Walmart has been working with Wing for several years to roll out a commercial drone delivery program but federal regulations currently limit how far those drones can operate. In this case, however, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted temporary approval to extend Wing’s operation beyond the visual line of sight so they could provide potentially life-saving supplies. People housed at the senior center can call the Walmart pharmacy and have their scripts filled. Those prescriptions are then flown in by drone in a package filled with other supplies requested by the center’s staff. Benadryl and glucose tablets, which are critical for people with diabetes, are high on the list of requested items.
“We’ve worked with Wing to quickly stand up a drone operation at our Marion, NC Supercenter to deliver critical supplies based on real-time needs, including prescriptions to those staying at a local shelter,” a Walmart spokesperson told Popular Science.
Deliveries like these are just one of a growing number of ways drones are reshaping the way first responders and everyday residents help people impacted by natural disasters. Though sophisticated professional drones have been used to assist in search and rescue operations and disaster relief for years, modern advances in cheaper, more widely available consumer-grade unmanned aircraft mean there are more remotely operated winged aircraft being used in disaster areas than ever before. Here are some of the ways drones were used to respond to Hurricanes Helene and Milton in recent weeks.
First responders use drones to find survivors and assess damage
Drones began responding to Hurricanes Helene and Milton before they ever reached landfall. In late September, while some Florida residents were packing their bags and planning evacuation routes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was simultaneously sending drones into the storm. The agency reportedly sent several uncrewed aircraft systems—a 27-pound Altius-600 and a smaller Blackswift S0—diving directly into the eye of the brewing storm to collect temperature, wind, and pressure readings. Those readings provide crucial data to help NOAA chart out a storm’s course trajectory and severity.
Drones were also buzzing through storm-filled streets once Helene and Milton made landfall. Local officials and first responders reportedly worked with autonomous drone maker Skydio to complement disaster response efforts. Officials, according to a report in Flying Magazine, used its drones to aid in search and rescue missions and overall damage assessment. The massive storms, which pummeled the southeast back-to-back over the span of several weeks, have reportedly resulted in more than $50 billion worth of damages. Helene alone claimed the lives of 220 people across six states. Over a hundred residents are still considered missing.
Many of the modern drones deployed by first responders over the past month come equipped with thermal imaging cameras. Those cameras can help rescue teams spot heart signatures of missing people who may otherwise be obstructed by debris. At the same time, other high-resolution cameras have quickly snapped photos and real-time video of broken bridges, downed power lines, and other crumbling infrastructure. The rapid response and flexibility of these drones can help officials prioritize aid efforts and bring much-needed electricity and communications equipment back online. In Asheville, North Carolina, first responders partnered with drone startup Paladin to respond to 911 calls and drop off emergency supplies like life vests and Narcan. In a recent interview with TechCrunch, Paladin CEO Divy Shrivastava claims Paladin’s drone response was able to clear between 10-25% of 911 false alarms or miscalls, which in turn gave emergency responders greater ability to address emergencies.
Drone-owning civilians are helping their neighbors
But official government entities weren’t the only ones assisting with drones. The relative affordability and accessibility of modern-day consumer drones have contributed to an upswell of volunteer groups and everyday residents deploying their own aircraft to disaster areas. One of these volunteer organizations, Texas-based First To Deploy, flew small drones over the Tennessee-North Carolina border to collect images of areas impacted by large debris piles. Images collected by the drones and shared with local outlet Fox 7 show roads falling into rivers and an entire home seemingly swept away by flooding. The group, which says it works closely alongside law enforcement in disaster areas, also used its drones to identify “hot spots” littered with dead bodies.
“It is absolute destruction,” Chris Starnes, a First To Deploy drone operator, told Fox 7.
“I can’t compare it to anything that I’ve personally seen in my lifetime other than Hurricane Katrina,” he added.
Another volunteer drone group called the Unmanned Search and Rescue (USAR) Drone Team, which ordinarily helps find missing pets, reportedly deployed its drones in battered Asheville to survey the aftermath of a three-mile mudslide. By flying his drones overhead, USAR was able to trace back the mudslide’s origin and document its destructive path. Mike Parziale, the group’s founder, used his DJI M350 Matrice drone to document the area’s altered geography to look for uprooted trees and other indicators that could point to areas at high risk for more mudslides.
Drones contributing to potentially dangerous aerial congestion
All of that increased aerial activity, even if well-intentioned, isn’t without side effects. On a single day in late September, as first responders and volunteers alike rushed to aid their neighbors in North Carolina, federal officials reported 30 mid-air close-call events. Air traffic over the state, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and the North Carolina Department of Transportation, ticked up by a whopping 300%. Drones, some of them deployed by everyday civilians without proper operating licenses, drove that figure up.
Airspace congestion got so bad that the FAA issued temporary flight restrictions limiting drone activity in the areas in an effort to prevent collisions. DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg even released a video statement warning civilian drone pilots they could face “criminal prosecutions” if they flew too close to disaster areas. That announcement and confusion over the reason for flight restrictions drew backlash from some local residents who argued the measures would prevent volunteers from potentially delivering medicine or aid to people in need. Other more conspiracy-minded observers falsely alleged the flight restrictions were issued to prevent “citizen journalists” from documenting the storm’s mayhem.
“I’ve been amazed at how a little kernel of some detail gets blown up on the internet into something that it’s not,” Buttigieg said during a recent MSNBC interview.
Residents are converting consumer drones into aid vehicles
Hurricane relief efforts continue even long after the storm’s deadly winds subside. FEMA estimates shelters have been housing up to 13,000 people who had their homes impacted or destroyed by the two storms. Many of these suddenly unhoused residents will have a long road to recovery. In the interim, shelters require a steady stream of food, supplies, and medicine to keep those people on their feet. Agriculture company Bestway Ag quickly cobbled together a small fleet of drones to send food, baby formula, and other supplies to around 100 people in North Carolina’s mountainous regions who had their access to main roads cut off. Using heavy lift-duty models typically used in agricultural settings, the company was reportedly able to deliver around two tons of food, water, and medical supplies.
In another recent example, local farmers combined simple hobbyist drones and cut-down shopping carts to create impromptu DIY disaster response vehicles. One of those farmers, highlighted by local outlet Fox8, reportedly attached a 40-foot rope to a drone normally used to spray crop fields and instead used it to air-drop critical supplies in difficult-to-reach areas.
“If my girls were hungry, I would want them fed,” the farmer told Fox8.
Drones can improve disaster readiness and recovery moving forward
Researchers are also using drones to better prepare local officials for the next inedible disaster. A team of hurricane researchers from Texas A&M is using high-resolution images of the damage caused by 10 disaster events in recent years to train a new AI model that can quickly and accurately assess a future storm’s impact. The team reportedly recruited 130 high school volunteers to view and label images collected by the drones which spanned around 16,500 acres of affected land and road.
Drone recovery responses like those trialed by Walmart could also become more of the norm. Though the company will likely conclude its drone deliveries to the North Carolina senior center in the coming days, the company is confident the lessons learned here could be applied to other areas in the future. And while commercial drone operators are still often limited to operating within a visual line of sight, an FAA spokesperson told Popular Science they can grant temporary approvals for up to 30 days to effectively extend that range. That approval process could come in handy during disaster response situations.
“This drone delivery operation is a proof of concept that we plan to use for exploring the long-term applications of drone delivery in future relief efforts and we hope to make a lasting positive impact,” the Walmart spokesperson said.