Former Rare Staff
Went in doubt, call in a drone.
Videos by Rare
A pair of hikers and their dog got lost in the beautiful wilderness of Colorado on Thursday afternoon, but thanks to a drone, the search for them ended up taking a few hours instead of going into the night and beyond.
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Video from the drone hovering high above the trees shows the moment rescuers first sighted the lost hikers on a rock.
According to KDVR, the two men and their dog were hiking on the Devil’s Head trail and got lost when they strayed off of it.
They still had enough cell service to call 911.
What they might not have expected is how efficiently they would be found. The volunteers who found them specifically focused on technological advances making everyone’s lives easier.
“Instead of an all-night search, we were done in about 4 hours,” Incident Commander Bruce Fosdick told KDVR. “50 years ago, basically everything was done by a group lined up in a straight line and just plodding through a field.”
Fosdick knows this because he’s being rescuing people since 1966.
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He also noted how much cheaper a drone is than a helicopter.
“If you look at an aircraft, they’re pretty expensive,” he said. “If I bring in a helicopter, then we’re talking 1 to 2 thousand dollars an hour to fly. We’re all volunteers. We don’t have a budget like that.”
