How drones are helping one community recover from Hurricane Helene
Motorists drive past flood damage along Craig Creek in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Sept. 30, 2024, near Black Mountain, North Carolina. Sean Rayford/Getty Images
In South Carolina, drones are playing a key role in disaster assessment for the city of Aiken to more efficiently and accurately apply for federal recovery funds.
Two months after Hurricane Helene ripped through several southern states, killing more than 200 people and racking up billions of dollars in damage, many communities are still sifting through rubble on their road to recovery. To help streamline the process, Aiken, South Carolina, is turning to drones for quicker, more accurate disaster assessments.
The Aiken Department of Public Safety is using the technology to more efficiently survey damage to buildings and infrastructure, which ultimately can help state and local governments secure recovery funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Chris Medlin, electronic systems administrator at Aiken’s public safety department.
Local governments can apply for FEMA funds to reimburse property damages from natural disasters, Medlin said, but that requires cities to be able to calculate the volume of damage debris and its estimated cost.
That’s why Aiken is using quadcopter drones from DJI to improve the data collection and volume evaluation process. The drones, which authorities deploy two days a week for about three minutes at a time, can collect photo and video data for documentation that are then fed into a program to produce models of the debris to calculate its volume, Medlin said.
“In 15 minutes, I’ve got a 3D model of the debris pile, and then from there, [in] another few minutes, and I’ve got a volume measurement of that pile,” he said.
The drones can also cover a greater area and view more of the hurricane’s damage than staff on the ground. Medlin recalled an ice storm, for instance, that passed through Aiken in 2014 that downed trees, damaged utilities and left roads unusable. At the time, staff had to eyeball the debris and project reimbursement costs based on its estimated volume.
Drones are also less expensive and less risky than operating manned aircraft like a helicopter, Medlin said. A crashed drone is a loss of $4,000 or so, he said, but a crashed helicopter could put millions of dollars on the line — and risks the pilot’s life.
Aiken is still conducting damage assessment, he said, but the drones “will make it easier for city management to accurately request reimbursement.”
“The footage we’ve collected in doing this damage assessment around the city has helped our city management [understand] what we’re dealing with and the severity of it,” he said. “But the biggest use of drones is the cleanup afterward.”
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