Texas flood recovery efforts face an unexpected obstacle: drones

Fast Company

6 hours ago

The flash floods that have devastated Texas are already a difficult crisis to manage. More than 100 people are confirmed dead after the July 4 deluge, and many more remain missing. But while recovery efforts are underway, Texas authorities are grappling with a compounding challenge: civilian drone operators interfering with emergency response.
Amateur pilots are either trying to capture dramatic footage of the disaster or, in some cases, attempting to locate missing or stranded people themselves. That's not just unhelpful—it's dangerous.
'We know that people want to volunteer, but what we are starting to see is personal drones flying,' Kerrville city manager Dalton Rice said at a recent press conference. Rice discouraged these have-a-go heroes with drones. 'These personal drones flying is a danger to aircraft, which then risks further operations,' he added.
What might seem like good intentions from above is, in practice, making things worse on the ground. 'Particularly with emergency response, people think that they're doing good, when, in reality, they're causing more harm than good,' says Ryan Wallace, a professor and drone expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
This isn't a new problem. In January 2025, a drone collided with one of two Super Scooper amphibious aircraft fighting the Los Angeles wildfires. The collision forced the aircraft to land and be decommissioned, instantly halving the region's firefighting capacity. 'It's a sad reality that people have been flying drones over disaster zones without permission ever since the technology came into widespread use over a decade ago,' says Arthur Holland Michel, a drone expert and author of Eyes in the Sky.
The growing availability of consumer drones over the past decade has worsened the issue. 'As drones became less expensive in the 2010s, more people had them for unregulated recreational use or professional photography,' explains Robin Murphy, professor emeritus at Texas A&M University. She recalls how, during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, officials had to call the sheriff to stop a civilian trying to film flood footage to sell to the news, just so official drone teams could gather time-sensitive emergency data.
Between 2015 and 2025, there have been 190 recorded instances of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) incursions, conflicts, or airspace intrusions that interfered with wildfire and U.S. Forest Service operations, according to Wallace.
Despite repeated education campaigns, the message isn't sinking in. 'Aviation authorities have tried again and again to educate drone users about the very real risks of interfering with rescue efforts and disaster relief, but it just doesn't seem to get through to some people,' Wallace says. While technical and legal options exist to disable unauthorized drones, the burden often falls on responders, who should be focused on saving lives and not policing airspace.
The comparison, Murphy notes, is stark: 'It's like a civilian walking up to a SWAT team commander during an active shooter event and offering to help cover off an angle because they have a gun permit. There are so many problems with this,' she says. 'The person doesn't have radios, doesn't know the parlance, isn't trained in SWAT, there are procedures for joining an agency, the agency would be liable for this person's actions, and so on. Same thing with self-deploying drones.'
Low-flying civilian drones also pose a collision risk to helicopters operating just above the ground to aid trapped residents. In crowded and chaotic airspace, the presence of rogue drones can quite literally turn deadly.
Even when drone pilots aren't disrupting emergency aircraft, their contributions often can't be used. 'The emergency managers usually can't use the data because it is not verified,' says Murphy. 'For example, agencies can't accept a report from a person claiming to be a civil engineer they have never met and without credentials who says a building is about to collapse; the agencies have a process for obtaining data according to accountability standards.' The file formats from commercial drones also don't always align with agency tools. One colleague, Murphy recalls, spent 40 hours converting well-meaning footage from a civilian into a usable format after a fire.
'What is disturbing to me personally is the lack of enforcement or consequences,' she adds. 'The agencies are in a no-win situation and can't do it; if they come down hard on self-deployed teams—assuming they had time during a response.'
As for why early warnings didn't prevent more loss of life during the Texas floods, some observers point to recent staffing cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which may have led to the early retirement of a key local meteorologist. The forecasting question may take time to answer, but the drone problem is already making itself known.