Idiots Who Want YouTube Clicks Are Interfering With CA Wildfire Fight With Drones

Don't fly a drone over a wildfire or any other disaster unless you are intent
on hurting people are making property damage worse. Idiots are flying
drones over California fires, grounding firefighter aerial effotrts.

Apparently, to some people a greater number of getting themselves more clicks on YouTube and other social media is more important than firefighters' efforts to save life and property.

That's the only conclusion I can draw from an article on the Weather Channel site that reports of people flying drones above wildfires in California.  

Drones have interfered with firefighting operations in California at least 19 times so far this year, says The Weather Channel, citing other media soures like the Los Angeles Times. 

The Weather Channel offers this illustration during the Maria fire in southern California on Friday.

"A Ventura County Fire Department helicopter pilot radioed in at 3:19 a.m. local time to report that a drone was flying above the flames, presumably to capture photos or video of the dramatic scene below, the Los Angeles Times reported. The aerial fight against the wildfire was immediately stopped and aircraft remained grounded for at least 45 minutes."

I'm not inherently against flying drones to capture images of disasters or other weather drama.  If you can do it with permission from authorities, in a way in which  you know it won't interfere with operations, then it's fine.

Drones are actually helpful in disasters, if they're run by authorized people, such as emergency personnel, police, firefighters and rescue services. The trick is, they coordinate things so there's no trouble.

Drones can help emergency managers assess structural damage, where relief supplies are most needed, and the location of people that need help. Here in Vermont, State Police will be using drones for things like crime scene investigations, car crash reconstructions and search and rescue, including during weather disasters, reports VTDigger.  Drones will make these activities much more efficient.

Many legitimate news organizations also use drones, and there's nothing wrong with that, because they check with authorities first to make sure they're not screwing things up.

Firefighters themselves use drones to track the path of wildfires and assess damage. The difference is that everything's coordinated.  The helicopter and water dropping aircraft know where those firefighter drones are, and the firefighter drone operators know where the aircraft are. So it works.

Firefighters just don't know where the drones are that people send up to get cool shots of the disaster.

This type of thing keeps happening. Drones interfered with relief operations during the aftermath of Category 5 Hurricane Michael in the Florida panhandle last year. The same thing happened with drones in the Carolinas after Hurricane Florence. 

I would like to think the amateurs whose drones interfere with emergency operations just are clueless and don't know the terrible effects they're having.  But I'm afraid some of them do know and just don't care.  After all, it's not the drone operator's grandparents stuck in their hilltop home as the flames approach.  It's not their own home burning down. So the logic is, who cares, it's not affecting me.

The solution, of course, is to make it affect these drone operators. I hope these drone operators amid the California wildfires are caught and made a very public example of through aggressive criminal prosecution.

That might make the wannabe YouTube storm chasing stars think twice before sending their drones up.

Yes, Punish Criminals But Giving Them Heat Stroke Is Cruel And Unusual Punishment

People being held in this St. Louis jail during a recent heat
wave yelled for help from inside the building, which
lacks air conditioning, as temperatures got up over 100 degrees.

The other day I saw a disturbing video of inmates in a St. Louis jail screaming for help as heat in the building climbed to over 100 degrees.

The "Workhouse" as the local jail is called, is largely without air conditioning, and St. Louis summers can get torrid.

This was another example of how jailers use summer heat to punish prisoners beyond what they were sentenced to, and the whole thing is terrible.

I'm all for punishing criminals and getting them off the streets, but putting them in prisons without air conditioning in places that get very hot in the summer ought to be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

In some cases, people intervened, or lawsuits were filed to force the air conditioning, but often times even these efforts don't work.

In the St. Louis instance, some help arrived. Most of the people in the Workhouse were people who were awaiting trial and had not been able to post bail, so local community organizations raised money to release some of those that had been jailed on bail, according to riverfronttimes.com. 

A demonstration erupted in front of the Workhouse too, as the public demanded better conditions in the building.

And finally, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson ordered that portable, industrial-size air conditioners be installed in the Workhouse.

But why did it take public pressure after years of trouble at this building?

In even hotter Texas, state prison officials have been dragging their feet and not getting air conditioning for prisons there, most of which are not cooled.

According to the Texas Tribune:

"The lack of cooling in Texas prisons has thrown both controversy and an ongoing class-action lawsuit onto the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Inmates at another Texas prison claim that heat constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and argue that prison housing should be kept at a maximum of 88 degrees."

A federal judge in Houston recently agreed, ordering air conditioning for medically-sensitive inmates at one jail near College Station.

But of course the state of Texas is appealing that ruling, because they want to seem tough on crime. Kill a few inmates with heat stroke, even if they weren't sentenced to death, and that will make everybody feel good, apparently.

Texas maintains the air conditioning would be too expensive, yet Texas has spent $2.1 million and counting defending itself against the prison heat lawsuits.

There is even a more extreme case: In Phoenix, an overcrowded jail prompted former evil sheriff Joe Arpaio to create an outdoor tent jail, forcing inmates to endure temperatures of up to 120 degrees. 

Arpaio, of course, seemed to enjoy doing this to inmates. He was finally voted out of office last year and officials pledged to remove the outdoor tent jail.

But it was still up this June, and about 380 inmates were still there as temperatures reached 120 degrees, and dropped all the way down to 90 degrees at night.

Jail officials assured us they were giving the inmates all the ice water and ice cubes they want. Oh, as if that would help in that kind of weather.

At least there's fewer inmates in that tent jail, and they're still promising to take it down.

We'll see.

I just worry that one day, we'll have a lot of heat stroke victims in jail, combined with a terrible prison riot. This all could come back to bite prison officials in Texas, Missouri and elsewhere.

Here's the video out of St. Louis:

Would Be Internet Weatherman Sets Wildfire To Increase Clickviews

Authorites accuse Johnny Mullins of setting a Kentucky wildfire
to bring attention to his weather-related social media.  

As I've noted earlier this month, the southeastern United States is plagued by dozens of wildfires that are taking advantage of a severe and deepening drought in that region.

Unfortunately, many of the wildfires have been started by arsonists.

It turns out that one of the wildfires was started by a would-be internet weatherman named Johnny Mullins who figured that starting a wildfire, and him reporting on it, would increase views on his Facebook page, says ArsTechnica.

According to ArsTechnica:

"According to Jenkins Police Chief James Stephens, the 21-year-old Mullins now faces a charge of second degree arson or setting a fire in Letcher County (Kentucky.) The chief told the Associated Press on Friday that Mullins said he started the fire he was charged with 'because he enjoyed the attention he got from the Facebook stuff.'"

Few, if any other online weather geeks and meteorologists would resort to something like starting a wildfire, but, as ArsTechnica points out, bad, dramatic or dangerous weather brings attention to meteorologists and weather geeks, including me. You get more viewers, more clicks, and increases TV ratings.

That leaves us feeling conflicted. Obviously, few people want to see death and destruction from severe weather. But to be honest, it's that very severe weather that helps bring meteorologists' and weather weenies their paychecks. It's ghoulish, to say the least.

I'm not sure what to do about it. Other than not setting wildfires to make people read our Facebook pages.  

Is This One Of The First Climate Change Inspired Crime Wave?

Drought in India, possibly caused by climate change,
is inspiring new crimes by bandits.  

Last month, in drought-stricken northern India, bandits threatened to kill hundreds of villagers unless they delivered 35 buckets of water a day to them, according to the Associated Press.    

This might be among the first cases of criminals taking advantage of climate change to conduct their misdeeds.

Yes, yes, I know some activists would say some oil companies, frackers, climate change denialists and the like are criminals, but I'm not going to go there. That's a discussion for another day.

But with weather patterns changing, likely at least in part due to global warming, the monsoon in northern India isn't working as well as it should. It's way too dry up there.

Bandits lurk in hard to reach, remote places in northern India, and the criminals take advantage of their hiding places to terrorize and torture these villagers.

According to the July 21 Associated Press article:

"Since the threats were delivered last week, 28 villages have been obeying the oerder, taking turns handing over what the bandits are calling a daily 'water tax' police said.

'Water itself is very scarce in the region. Villagers can hardly meet their demand,' officer Suresh Kumar Singh said by telephone from Banda, a city on the southern border of central Uttar Pradesh state and caught within what is known in India as bandit country"

Police do see an opportunity in the drought, too. If the bandits don't get enough water from the villagers, or the supply line between villagers and the bandits are exposed, they might have to venture out to more exposed areas, where they could be caught, according to the AP article.