Drones Join the Front Lines in Deadly Texas Flood Response

Group deploys drones to search for victims in Texas Hill Country flood

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

The deadly Independence Day floods, which deluged a wide swath of the Central Texas Hill County, triggered a robust response from drone operators in the volunteer sector, who lent their UAVs to aid in recovery efforts and the search for victims.

The disaster claimed the lives of 133 persons, including at least 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp near the city of Kerrville. Officials had estimated that the number of people missing in Kerr County in the wake of the flood as being as high as 160, but further investigation put the number of missing at just three, as of July 20.

Among the many non-governmental organizations that responded to the tragedy was Heal-Corp, a non-profit disaster-aid organization, which quickly went into the flooded area with teams of emergency medical personnel equipped with rescue boats, heavy equipment, specially trained K9 units and drones.

“We first came in on July 4th,” Heal-Corp President Larry Mynar said in an interview. “We put our drones up and we were flying grids.”

Working in conjunction with state officials, Heal-Corp’s volunteer pilots began flying two DJI Mavic 30T drones equipped with RGB and thermal cameras, looking for survivors who may have been swept away by the rushing floodwaters of the Guadalupe River.

“The first thing that we encountered when we first came here was the massive amounts of water. We brought our rescue boat but we couldn’t get on the river,” Mynar said. “It was way too high to get into. It wasn’t safe.”

So instead of trying to conduct water rescues, the team deployed the drones and started flying 500-foot wide grid patterns in search of survivors.

Unfortunately, that initial search for living victims proved unsuccessful.

“It pretty quickly turned into a recovery situation,” Mynar said.

After the initial search for survivors concluded, Heal-Corp’s drone teams stayed in the disaster zone for about two weeks, conducting grid searches along a stretch of the river valley from Camp Mystic to Comfort, Texas a distance of about 40 miles. The drones served as eyes in the sky, guiding ground searches of the massive debris field conducted by human volunteers and cadaver dogs.

The video images shot from the drones were sent to screens inside the organization’s command trailer. “You can put eight people in here and watch your footage,” he said.

Mynar said the M 30T drones are well adapted for this type of work, with the capability of being programmed to perform grid searches and the ability to hover over a single spot for 35 to 40 minutes.

“From 200 foot you can read the writing on a 16-ounce Coke bottle. That’s the effectiveness of the camera,” he said. “And then we have the DroneSense software so that several people can have their eyes on there and they’re watching what’s going on at the time.”

Through the use of its drones and ground-based search terms, the Heal-Corp volunteers ultimately discovered the bodies of several people who had perished in the flood, bringing a degree of closure to the victims’ families.

Cooperation with other emergency aircraft essential

Throughout the missions flown by their drones, the volunteer pilots took great care to avoid getting into conflict with the manned aviation traffic that was also responding to the disaster. Early in the response local police officials reported a collision with a drone and a helicopter, though the details of the incident remain unclear.

Mynar, himself a helicopter pilot, said he did not witness any incidents involving drones and manned aircraft.

“In the area that I was in, it was pretty controlled,” he said. “And then we were also communicating with helicopter aviation through the radios. And what we do is, when they come up on the ADS-B, we always just land, get out of their way, let them go on and go back up. It doesn’t take but a second just to lower it down, to get out of their way.”

He said communication and coordination are key when working with multiple agencies flying both manned and unmanned aircraft in a disaster area.

“Otherwise you’re going to have some issues. You’ve got to have some type of separation, because in a helicopter you can’t see a drone,” he said. “So, I always tell everybody, ‘Hey in aviation the most maneuverable yields way, and the drone is way more maneuverable than the helicopter.’ So, you give way.”

Launched in 2019, with offices in St. Augustine, Florida, and Royse City, Texas, Heal-Corp has been active in conflict zones and disaster response in both the U.S and around the world. In the United States, the organization has aided victims of the Hurricane Helene floods in North Carolina and the Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Texas Panhandle.

Internationally, Heal-Corp played a critical role in crisis areas in Haiti and Turkey, where the volunteer group has delivered medical aid, trauma care training and humanitarian relief to communities impacted by earthquakes, floods and other disasters.

Mynar said the Hill Country flood was similar in geographic scope to the flooding in North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene, although the Texas disaster represented a greater tragedy in term of the number of lives lost.

In terms of the response, however, Mynar praised the efforts of both volunteer responders and state officials.

“Man, I have to tell you, I’ve worked in a lot of disasters, but the coordination on this one here has been exceptional,” he said. “I can tell you this, by and large, this has been a really well-organized, well-run search. The state of Texas has done a phenomenal job.”

Looking ahead in its response to future disasters, Mynar said Heal-Corp is working toward the development of a heavy-lift drone, capable of carrying a person out of danger. He said the group is in preliminary discussions with drone manufacturers and aviation regulators to build and gain approval for such a life-saving UAV

“Hopefully over the next several years we can get it to where we can carry human cargo. Who knows?”

Read more:

• Drones in Disaster: Why No-Fly Zones Matter During Texas Flood Rescue
• Drones in Disaster: Why Coordination Saves Lives
• Rising Above the Storm: How Drones Are Revolutionizing NYC’s Disaster Response 12 Years After Hurricane Sandy

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International