When the water rises, what can you do? When torrential rains led to massive flooding in Louisiana, the floodwaters displaced thousands of people. Getting to shelter is the most important thing, but for many, the most urgent question on their mind once they found somewhere to wait out the storm was finding out if their home is still underwater. That's a hard thing to do remotely. It's a pretty easy thing to do with remotely piloted vehicles.
On Sunday, Baton Rouge-based drone film company Atmosphere Aerial asked people on Facebook to send them locations of homes and flooding so they could fly over and help how they could. (They also asked people to send them open roads to those places, so they could get their safely).
As Dronelife reports:
The posts was shared over 800 times and quickly flooded with hundreds of comments from residents and family members in the affected areas, begging the photographers for footage of neighborhoods and buildings where they feared loved ones might be stranded.
The team has been working tirelessly since then, posting raw video footage of neighborhoods and streets for the community to see. Desperate requests to check on buildings, animal shelters, senior communities, and cemeteries – where loose coffins have been seen floating down flooded streets – are being posted and responded to.
The company is looking out for people below, and the Atmosphere Aerial Facebook page is filled with videos of the flooding, as you can tell from the low sky.
The team is also adding locations and timestamps to the video so that people can use the footage for insurance purposes afterwards. After the water recedes, hopefully that video will protect people's insurance claims, and keep them from going underwater.
