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Corona’s new drone is latest tool to warn rivers’ homeless to storm danger

April 1, 2023

On New Year’s Eve, 10 Corona firefighters waded into the Rincon Wash, searching in the dark through thick brush for two homeless people who were trapped by rising stormwater.

Finally, after an hour, the people were located and rescued.

“Every time we put one of our guys in the water, especially swift water, it puts them at risk,” Corona firefighter/paramedic Mike Leckliter said.

But now, with the acquisition of a state-of-the-art drone in late January, the Fire Department can more accurately pinpoint the location of the homeless people inhabiting the city’s rivers and washes to alert them to impending storms and use that information to decrease the time to reach them if they require rescue. The drone can even deliver a life vest.

“It’s going to be a game-changer for us,” Deputy Fire Chief Justin McGough said.

Corona firefighter and paramedic, Mike Leckliter demonstrates the new state-of-the-art rescue drone outside the fire station on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

The drone is just one of many ways, high tech, low tech and no tech, that public safety agencies in Southern California warn homeless people to move to higher ground ahead of rising water. The methods often involve person-to-person contact using outreach teams, cell phone alerts and messages broadcast over loudspeakers from police helicopters such as Riverside Police Department’s that flies over encampments in the Santa Ana River ahead of major storms.

The consequences of failing to relocate were spotlighted in November when a surge of water in the Cucamonga Wash in Ontario following a rainstorm swept three homeless people to their deaths. This winter, a seemingly never-ending series of storms has kept water levels — and the danger — high and filled creeks and rivers that can often be dry.

Firefighters look for people trapped in the rain-swollen Cucamonga wash in Ontario on Nov. 8, 2022. Several homeless people were rescued. (Photo by Watchara Phomicinda, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

“We’re always looking at ways to prevent a tragedy like that from happening,” said Orange County sheriff’s Sgt. Frank Gonzalez, who is assigned to a team of 12 deputies and a clinician in the department’s behavioral health bureau.

Six deputies are assigned to the Santa Ana River, which in OC stretches from the Riverside County border to the Pacific Ocean. When the skies are clear, the deputies offer resources such as housing and food. When rain is coming, the deputies return to urge the homeless to relocate.

A San Bernardino County Fire swift rescue team prepares to cross the Santa Ana River to rescue 8 stranded individuals in 2019. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

“The biggest thing is gaining trust, communication and showing empathy and showing over time that we are genuine. We earn their trust, they know we are empathetic to what they are going through and over time, we are able to gain compliance from a lot of these individuals,” Gonzalez said.

In Los Angeles County, sheriff’s deputies working with the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority talk to homeless people living in rivers personally and make announcements over loudspeakers.

The Ontario deaths spurred change in San Bernardino County.

Before then, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Huerta, the threat of flood hazards to life was “generally the responsibility of flood control personnel or the jurisdiction where the risk was present.” The county’s homeless outreach team would “sometimes make notifications in major waterways,” and a sheriff’s helicopter crew would make announcements as well.

Members of a San Bernardino County homeless outreach team contact people in a flood control channel in December 2022. The county has been developing a telephone system to alert such homeless people to coming storms that would cause the water level to rise. (Courtesy of San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department)

Now, the county is working toward a more formalized process. The outreach team has been meeting with the county Office of Emergency Services and has proposed using the reverse 911 system to warn homeless people living where dangerous flooding is likely, Huerta said. In the meantime, outreach workers are handing out cards instructing homeless people how to sign up for a county emergency telephone system that sends text messages.

“It is a common misnomer that most folks who are homeless lack cell phones,” Huerta said.

Riverside County officials count on homeless people owning cell phones. The county several times during the winter storms sent alerts to cell phones, accompanied by loud tones, urging people in the Santa Ana River to move to higher ground.

Corona’s new $32,000 drone can’t make phone calls, but that’s about it.

The advantages it has over the Fire Department’s fleet of six smaller drones are that it can fly for an hour vs. 20 minutes on a battery charge, it can fly in rain and high wind, its cameras have improved zoom lenses and can detect heat signatures coming from a person from farther away, and it can deliver a payload weighing up to 7 pounds.

A homeless man clings to a tree in the Los Angeles River in the Atwater area of Los Angeles as members of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s swift water rescue team assist. LA sheriff’s deputies work with housing officials to warn homeless people living in rivers ahead of coming storms. (Photo by Mike Meadows)

Leckliter put the drone through the paces in a recent demonstration. He zoomed in on a construction worker from 1,000 feet away, close enough to get a detailed description of his build and clothing. Leckliter then snapped on an attachment and hooked a life vest to it. He pressed a button on a control panel and the drone released the vest. The drone can also drop two-way radios and bottles of water to lost hikers.

“It’s whatever our imagination is,” Leckliter said.

The infrared camera system has allowed firefighters to find homeless encampments where there were believed to be none. That will help them target more people for alerts. Operators of the drone can attach a loudspeaker and drop a pin on an electronic map that shows up on tablets that are in each fire engine, allowing crews to go more directly to victims.

Leckliter has his own fleet of drones, including a racing drone that can travel at 80 mph and one with a GPS system that will follow him as he rides his bicycle. He said he lobbied the department to purchase this advanced drone.

“As a drone pilot I understood the abilities that would bring our department to be able to more rapidly acquire intel and get to scenes faster than we ever could and ultimately decrease the risk of putting our personnel in hazardous locations when we can do the same thing with remote resources,” Leckliter said,

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Corona’s new drone is latest tool to warn rivers’ homeless to storm danger

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