Hurricane Florence is sadly still on track to become the first Category 4 storm to make a direct hit somewhere around North or South Carolina or Georgia in six decades, it is threatening to unleash pounding surf, days of torrential rain and severe flooding.
Currently packing maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. Sadly, the aftermath of this is likely going to mean a large amount of damage to homes and business in the area along with a sustained period of search and rescue (SAR) missions in the area.
--SAR Tools--
Modern search and rescue missions work much like they have for a long time. The involve a huge amount of people manually looking for survivors by sorting through damaged buildings and flood water, along with sniffer dogs to locate anyone who may be trapped. Often helicopters are called in to assist in difficult extractions and to survey large areas and more recently drones have been used to enable super-fast and cheap (compared to a helicopter and pilot) searching of an area.
Due to their ease of access, price, stability when flying and range, DJI drones are often chosen to assist in these missions, however DJI employ their terrible GEO system, declaring areas damaged in natural events like this a NFZ, meaning that authorised SAR parties are grounded and must use DJI’s painfully slow approval process before they can begin helping people.
--How Can NLD Help?--
NLD previously helped during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 by distributing NLD license keys to SAR teams. This enabled them to get in the air in minutes by totally bypassing DJI’s GEO system meaning they had a better chance at locating and then helping survivors. Sadly, we were a little late on the scene and we had SAR parties contacting us after the main event trying to get unlocks. This time we want to be there from the start, so we can help these brave people in getting help to those who truly need it.
This is the deal. If you are involved in any legitimate, authorised SAR mission in any of the areas affected by Hurricane Florence, NLD will give you a key to our software. This will enable you to disable DJI’s GEO system and fly your craft to aid in your SAR mission. The only proof we ask for is some kind of evidence that you truly are involved in a legitimate SAR operation. To get this key, simply go to http://support.nolimitdronez.com/open.php , fill out your details and select “SAR Operations” under the Help Topic. Write a quick message stating that you’re part of an active, authorised SAR operation in the area of Hurricane Florence and attach some sort of photographic proof that this is true. We will then contact you back with a voucher code entitling you to a 100% discount on the software, along with instructions on how you can get the NFZ’s disabled. We truly want to help and will get codes out to you as fast as we possibly can as soon as were happy youre genuinely involved in the SAR operation.
--To Everyone Else (non SAR team members)--
We appreciate that any natural events, especially ones of this magnitude are scary, but once the main event has passed that we appreciate that we live in a modern world where everyone’s first reaction is to film what’s going on around them. If you live in or around the area, you may be tempted to get in touch and try to blag a key for free, or even fly your drone if you’re already an NLD user, but PLEASE…don’t do this.
If a SAR helicopter pilot sees a drone in the area that’s not known about, the chopper has to be grounded for safety of the aircraft and pilots. This means that people whose lives may be saved by this search method may not be so lucky….
NLD supports the following DJI products: Phantom 4/ADV/PRO+, Mavic PRO/Platinum, Mavic AIR, Spark, Inspire 2 and DJI Goggles.
For a up-to-date view on the storms path, take a look at Googles Crisis Storm Tracker
Stay safe, be smart and help each other.
/Cs2000 and all of the NLD crew