Authorities in Florida have begun cleaning up the devastation to homes and beaches caused by Hurricane Ian.  It’s an arduous task, made more difficult by the lack of access to some of the hardest hit areas. But thanks to  surveillance overflights conducted by swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) authorities are piecing together a comprehensive visual map of the storm damage to better target their resources for post-hurricane reconstruction.

No one public or private agency is coordinating the drone mapping effort.  Public utilities anxious to get service restored for hundreds of thousands of Floridians still without power have one initiative underway.  Another is being led by a local hurricane storm chaser, Aaron Jayjack, who is responding to requests from businesses and homeowners anxious to obtain video footage of damage to their properties.

State and local authorities are conducting their own surveillance efforts, drawing on more traditional means – helicopters and low-flying small propeller planes.  While unmanned drones enjoy a distinct advantage – they can bravely fly into high-risk storm zones without fear of death or injury to their vehicle crews – authorities have begun imposing temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) on drones and other unauthorized aircraft, ostensibly to avoid collisions.  Jayjack and the utility companies, while not flagrantly flouting the TFRs, appear to be flying anyway.

Another participant in aerial surveillance flights is Verizon, which pre-positioned dozens of drones and mobile cell towers in southwestern Florida just as Ian was making landfall. Now that the hurricane has passed, the company is rushing to identify areas of lost service while also sharing its collected video footage to assist local search-and-rescue efforts.

National and local news organizations are also getting into the action.  Over the weekend USA Today reported on massive post-Ian destruction in Daytona Beach as well as defensive preparations by citizens in several cities across South Carolina.  Reuters aired eye-opening images of dozens of beached yachts washed ashore in the city of Ft. Myers on Florida’s Gulf Coast. And drones deployed by a local TV station – Fox 5 News – captured first responders speeding dramatically through a foot of brown water to rescue stranded residents in Summerville, Georgia.

Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency tasked with documenting extreme weather incidents and their causes, conducted a first-of-its-kind drone mission inside the eye of Ian, a task far too dangerous for NOAA’s traditional manned aircraft.  The NOAA’s PF Altius drone, which flies as low as a thousand feet, can document Ian’s movement at the water’s surface, yielding fresh clues about how Category 5 hurricanes develop and move ashore.

Thanks to these combined surveillance efforts, Ian could prove to be the most well-documented hurricane on record, experts say.

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