Drones in mountain rescue services in Bieszczady Mountains

UAS have revolutionized the work of many services including those dedicated to rescue operations. Drone services in this case are using for saving life’s of lost and injured. The basic activity of Bieszczady Mountain Volunteer Rescue Service is to help people in need in the mountains, but rescuers often take part in actions outside the mountain area, e.g. during heavy searches, mass accidents or activities using rope techniques and a helicopter. Now also drones are included as a professional equipment. This is new powerful addition to the rest of the tools used so far, which can enter easily into the difficult unreachable areas. Agility, aerial inteligence helps a lot more to gather information about searching area.
Implementing drones was the main activity in the project and it was strongly related to the project goals like establishing a training and coordination center for cross-border rescue operations ,reduction of the mobilization time of rescue teams increasing the effectiveness of cross-border rescue operations in the Bieszczady Mountains and raising the qualifications of rescuers from the crossborder area. Of course together with the purchease of the equpment (one drone with a thermal imaging camera and one searching in a daylight drone) the rescuers participated in training for drone operators (officially: unmanned aerial vehicles) with an additional authorization for out-of-sight flights for the weight category of aircraft up to 25 kg.