Small, remotely-piloted flying machines are making a lot of neat things possible (low-budget movie effects, soon-to-be delivery services), but we have a lot of work to do to figure out how they fit in to society:
Drones can wreak havoc since firefighting aircraft fly so low when they perform water drops. As a US Forest Service spokesperson tells ABC, "As soon as we see drones, we shut down all of our aircraft for the safety reasons ... If a drone got sucked into a wing or a propeller, that could have some serious impacts."
Officials say that ground crews had to find the drone operators and tell them to stop flying around the fire before aircraft were able to continue attempts to control the blaze. In all, the incident delayed efforts by roughly 26 minutes — valuable time as wildfires can quickly grow out of control.