Jet flying over HPP for last half hour at 4:00 am

[terracore]

It’s a sad situation, but the response time is about on par with other incidents down here.
Consider, it’s the middle of the night.  HPP Fire is 3 miles away, they’ll arrive quickly, but they’re a fire department not an ocean rescue.  Police will arrive from various locales around Puna.  
No one is sitting in a chopper at Hilo airport ready to take off.  A pilot has to be contacted, get dressed, drive to the airport…
And the chopper can’t see the ocean at night.

"Fire Chief Kazuo Todd said the county helicopter responded, but not until daylight.

“Our bird doesn’t go up until there’s light,” Todd said. He said the Fire Rescue boat was deployed, but it takes awhile for it to respond from Hilo."

I think the moral of the story, or maybe something the boyfriend doesn't understand, is that there aren't lifeguards on duty, or anybody else that can respond quickly to this type of emergency.  Whether somebody gets lost in the ocean or on Mauna Kea, the system isn't setup for a rapid response, because people aren't expected to get lost in these areas, even though they do.  It must have been doubly painful for him to be able to see her and know that there was nothing he could do.  I feel bad for all involved, including the would-be-rescuers who work for a broken government.

It wouldn't be a heavy lift to get some firefighters or other rescue personnel licensed to fly drones capable of assisting to locate / illuminate people in rescue situations like this. There is probably grant money that would pay for the training and the drones.

[kalianna]

When my neighbors in CA would blast their bass-heavy tunes at us we would counter with Dolly Parton and Ornette Coleman. If you canʻt best the bass, kill ʻem with the treble.

[TomK]

Blasting them back with bagpipe music would be my option. However, terracore makes an interesting point:

"It wouldn't be a heavy lift to get some firefighters or other rescue personnel licensed to fly drones capable of assisting to locate / illuminate people in rescue situations like this. There is probably grant money that would pay for the training and the drones."

We saw that during the 2018 eruption, a lost resident was rescued using a thermal IR imager to locate him and have him guided to safety. I can't remember if this was from a drone or a helicopter, I'd have to find the video again. Just a few people, perhaps those in the neighborhood watch groups, have drones equipped with IR cameras, which are relatively cheap these days and might be able to locate someone in the sea faster than the rescue services getting there. They work day or night and if a decent case was made, I'm sure some funding could be made available.

You'd need to be careful about the potential of the system being abused and given the history of disputes in Puna subdivisions we've seen here before, that might be a problem, but it would be a fast way of telling the rescue services exactly where to go.

PS. Found one of the vidoes, it was a drone with an IR thermal camera.

https://youtu.be/rL_ZNYRG2A8?si=W6vRFbKEc5UdEidR

[alaskyn66]

Id like to see some tests done with a drone with a thermal camera.

Would it even be able to locate anything.
If just the head was above surface, that would be an awful small target
For such a wide area... And could be easily overlooked.

[TomK]

Well although some testing would be needed, the technology already exists, see the video I posted. It's relatively inexpensive and in the right hands could locate lost people in the sea or on land. It won't necessarily mean they can be rescued, but it improves the chances. All that's needed is that the drone + camera is near the shore. It's certainly better than waiting for the "bird" to be able to fly, which frankly I find disrespectful. It's a helicopter and many helicopters fly at night if you have qualified pilots.

[terracore]

I understand that in this instance the person had a flotation device. Drones can also be equipped to drop things like that.

"If just the head was above surface, that would be an awful small target"

Drones can be programmed to autonomously sweep an area with sufficient overlap they won't miss anything, getting multiple paths from different angles over the same area to account for things like swells and waves that might otherwise obscure a heat signature. And I don't mean expensive futuristic drones. Regular consumer drones can do this. The waters within drone mapping distance from the operator could be divided into quadrants (or whatever you want to call them) and pre-programmed for the search. So if somebody goes missing off "Kaloli Point" or "Kehena Beach" all the drone operator has to do is hit that button and the drone will automatically fly there and start searching. That would save several minutes in the field not drawing out the flight boundaries and configuring the mission.

Whether or not the camera or sensing equipment is sensitive enough to return potentially useful data is probably only dependent on how much money one wants to spend.

While consumer drones have a lot of functionality, what they don't generally do is fly in the rain. It would cost some extra dollars to acquire drones that would be effective in most of our types of weather.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

I don’t quite understand this. The boyfriend said he swam into the ocean to his girlfriend? If he reached her, did he try and swim back with her on the floatation device but was unsuccessful? Does anyone know more about this detail?

Gapp claimed that after an hour went by and the rescue boat and helicopter still hadn't arrived, he swam out to where his girlfriend was clinging to a raft, per the outlet. However, by the time he returned, he said first responders could no longer see her.

https://people.com/mother-dies-after-sli...ii-8598680

[kalianna]

That doesnʻt jive either with the local stories or common sense. Methinks People doesnʻt have a clue about what happened here.

[HiloJulie]

Perhaps Mr. Gapp is now embellishing his story?

[TomK]

Whether or not the camera or sensing equipment is sensitive enough to return potentially useful data is probably only dependent on how much money one wants to spend. 

I don't think we're talking about expensive technology, perhaps a few thousand dollars which would get used over and over again. You only need a thermal IR camera to detect heat, you don't need it to make out details. Someone floating in the ocean will shine much more brightly than the water.