Canadian plane grounded after being hit by drone while fighting LA wildfires

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A Canadian firefighting aircraft was grounded and pulled from California after being hit and damaged by a drone. Officials say the drone was flown over the wildfires illegally.

Here in Arizona, fire officials are urging drone operators in our community to learn from this.

This not only puts the safety of firefighters and pilots at risk, but it can also “take out” an important resource. These aircrafts can get into areas ground crews can’t and drop thousands of gallons of water on the flames at once.

Fire crews in Arizona say they see more and more people flying their drones over wildfires.

“The most important thing to know is that if you fly a drone at one of these brush fires, all aerial operations will be shut down. And we certainly don’t want to have that happen,” Los Angeles County Fire Department Chief Anthony Marrone said.

The L.A. County Fire Chief pleaded with the community not to fly drones over wildfires after the super scooper on loan from Canada was damaged after officials say it was hit by a civilian drone illegally over the Palisades Fire.

“It was a three by six inch hole in the wing of an aircraft, which, you can imagine if that hole spread across the wing, it could take the entire aircraft down and now we’re dealing with a plane crash in the middle of a historic wildfire for Southern California,” Akil Davis, the FBI Assistant Director in Los Angeles said. The plane had to be grounded for several days, a massive loss in the firefight as it could scoop thousands of gallons of water.

“Fly them around other places, don’t fly them around our wildfires,” Brad Widhalm with Tonto National Forest said.

It’s a message that has been echoed here in Arizona. In multiple wildfires last year, fire officials had to pause much-needed air support while battling flames because someone was flying a drone in the area. “Unfortunately, it’s becoming more of a common occurrence these days,” Tiffany Davila from the Department of Forestry and Fire Management said.

Davila says drones can cause a mid-air collision or be a big distraction for pilots, which could lead to a serious or deadly accident.

“It really does make a huge ripple effect in the firefighting efforts from grounding aircraft to pulling resources off of the line to property protection and overall public safety,” she said.

Davila believes many of these drones are for social media and that it’s unnecessary to be there, so people are not only risking safety, but it is also illegal to fly drones over a wildfire. According to the FAA, violators can be fined up to $25,000 and criminal prosecution.

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