A bill in the North Carolina House of Representatives clarifies how emergency-management officials could use drones when performing specific duties.

House Bill 94, of which Republican Rep. Michael Speciale, who represents the 3^rd District in the state House, is a primary sponsor, gives those officials authority to use drones for incident command, area reconnaissance, personnel and equipment deployment monitoring, and other related emergency management-response purposes. The bill, if it becomes law, would amend General Statute 15A-300.1, which places some restrictions on the use of drones, also known as unmanned aircraft systems.

Rep. Beverly Boswell, who represents District 6 in the state House, is among the bill’s other sponsors. Districts 3 and 6 include parts of Beaufort County.

The bill, filed Feb. 14, was referred to the Committee on Judiciary III on Feb. 15. If it receives a favorable report from that committee, it would move to the Committee on Transportation.

“Right now, the law allows them to do it, but it’s not really clear. Basically, this clarifies that they can use it and what the parameters are, that they’re bound by the same parameters as law enforcement,” Speciale said Monday.

Speciale said an emergency-management official told him about an incident that indicated drones would be useful in certain situations. “They gave me a story about a helicopter taking three hours. Where if they had a drone they could have flown in right over and got the information they needed. It’s just crazy to have to go through all that when we know have the technology (to respond faster),” Speciale said.

John Pack, Beaufort County’s emergency-management director, said he sees a need for drones in emergency management, but they should be operated under strict protocols. North Carolina Emergency Management has two drones, he noted.

“They have utilized those in a couple of search and rescues to assist them … with incident command and reconnaissance. It’s not anticipated every county will be buying drones. There may some bought for a two- or three-county area. Then, if we need them, we call that county and that county sends somebody down with the drone to fly the mission,” Pack said.

He added: “I see great need of it following a disaster. As an example, Hickory Point. It was two days before we were actually able to get a vehicle into Hickory Point after the hurricane. It sure would have been nice to have flown a drone in there to see what we really had. There are places that are inaccessible in the marsh areas that we have. If we were searching for human beings or bodies, or something like that, it would allow us to use the drone to actually look, and some of the drones have heat-seeking capabilities.”

Recently, the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Division of Aviation participated with about 50 state and local government agencies in a workshop on using drones in crisis situations. DOA Director Bobby Walston, in an interview with govtech.com, said private owners of drones volunteered to fly their drones to help emergency crews by providing aerial views of flooded areas. Some cities, towns and counties that own drones used them to collect information, according to Basil Yap, DOT’s unmanned aircraft systems manager based in Raleigh.