Fighting forest fires in the western part of the U.S. has always been a difficult and dangerous job. However, the proliferation of hobby drones, and lack of adequate enforcement action against those operating them recklessly, is making the situation much worse.

Case in point: A massive fire in the San Bernardino Mountains (known as the Lake Fire) had charred more than 25,000 acres by late Thursday night (see the article by KABC). However, as reported by the LA Times and KTLA, hobbyists flying drones in the area forced firefighting aircraft (among them, a DC-10 with over 10,000 gallons of retardant) to return to base. The incident commander could not risk the possibility of losing the aircraft due to a collision with the drone.

Drone advocates were quick to make posts to Twitter with the sober message from USDA Forest Service regarding their firefighting aircraft: “If YOU fly, we can’t.”

I certainly agree completely with this message. However, no amount of posting will completely eliminate reckless behavior. Severe penalties, along with some high profile example cases, though, might be a good step towards drastically reducing these occurrences. We cannot go on with the hopes that the hobby drone community will effectively self-regulate. There must be very stiff penalties for actions that endanger the public. The Lake Fire grew as a direct result of the firefighting aircraft having to abort their mission.