DRONE FOOTAGES HELPS SAVES HAWAIIANS TRAPPED BY LAVA

Drones are not only used to do cool things like helping photographers and filmmakers get impressive aerial shots.

These cool robots are now being used for something extremely good, thanks to drone footage, emergency responders in Hawaii were able to rescue trapped civilians. The U.S. Geological Survey has more below.

“Follow the drone to safety.” USGS UAS mission in Kīlauea volcano’s lower East Rift Zone on 5/27/18 helps guide evacuations and leads to the successful rescue of a resident after a lava pond outbreak sends a fast pāhoehoe flow down Luana Street. https://t.co/S3nUtwYMdM pic.twitter.com/kpfjQI9pOX

— USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) May 30, 2018

As you can imagine, volcano eruptions are a particularly tricky natural disaster to deal with. How do you exactly help people escape when burning hot liquid rocks blow out of a mountain and start randomly tearing through the streets of your island home?

You have to act decisively with limited, constantly changing information. In order to deal with the eruption of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, teams used live-streaming aerial drone footage to get a better sense of what was happening and respond more intelligently.

By using the real-time footage from the drones, and being able to see high-up in the air, the search teams could better, and more quickly, direct evacuation efforts away from dangerous lava ponds. They were even able to follow a safe path directly towards an individual trapped resident and get them to safety by using the drone as a reference.

Drones, like people, contain multitudes. We should be concerned when they are being used for evil. And we should push for them to do more good. Saving civilians from a volcano eruption is pretty good.