Idaho Gov. Butch Otter recently joined a long list of officials warning of potential safety hazards posed by personal drones when he issued a public service announcement Aug. 20, at the height of the wildfire season.

“It’s critically important that drones do not fly anywhere near a wildfire,” Otter said in his video announcement, posted on YouTube. “Drones can interfere with the wildland fire air traffic necessary to suppress these fires.”

Officials acknowledge actual accidents involving drones have been few and far between thus far, but they insist the danger is real, and people who fly them should take precautions and avoid rescue workers.

In late July, as a large fire crew led by the Bureau of Land Management worked to contain the nearly 100,000-acre Grassy Ridge Fire north of Dubois, agency officials voiced similar concerns as Otter, reporting a “near miss” between a drone and a helicopter. Officials said the pilot of the helicopter saw the drone just in time to avoid the collision. The wildland fire team leaders reminded the public of a Temporary Flight Restriction over the burn area.

After this near-miss, all of the aircraft fighting the Grassy Ridge Fire were grounded to check the area and make sure it was safe to resume flying.

“The incursion into the TFR airspace nearly cost the lives of three firefighters working this fire and a very expensive aircraft,” fire officials said in a press release.

One of the few recorded aircraft crashes caused by a drone occurred during the winter in South Carolina — not through direct contact, but rather as a result of a helicopter pilot trying to avoid an approaching drone. He reportedly hit the tail of the helicopter against a tree or brush, bringing the helicopter to the ground. Neither the instructor nor his student were injured.

Kathleen Gorby, spokeswoman for the Targhee National Forest, said more drones are entering the airspace as they become more affordable. If a drone were to crash into a helicopter, there’s a high probability it could bring it down.

Gorby said another possible reason why there have been few reported cases of drones causing crashes during wildfires is because of the procedures they take, requiring them to ground aircraft upon spotting drones where they don’t belong.

Aric Burgendorf, a Hawaii-based tour guide pilot who graduated from Utah Helicopter Flight School in Pocatello, said the primary danger of a helicopter crashing into a drone is the drone getting caught in the rotors, which could lead to a devastating crash.

“If we were to have a blade strike, like say the drone hit our rotors, that could shatter the blade and it could knock us right out of the sky,” Burgendorf said.

The two spots on the helicopter that are vulnerable to drones are the rotors on the top and the tail, he said.

Burgendorf said it’s a misconception that helicopter blades push the air down while they fly, and instead “what’s happening is we’re creating a suction cup above us, so there’s a huge suction cup, and if a drone is anywhere near that it gets pulled into the rotor.”

“So it doesn’t have to just be pulled into the exact direct line, it can be pulled in from a distance,” Burgendorf said.

Burgendorf said another issue with civilian drones in TFR airspace is that they don’t have radios, so communication between drones and helicopters is impossible.

“The main thing is a lack of communication that could lead to a collision,” Burgendorf said. “They don’t have a radio, so we don’t know where they are, and then they’ll just pop right up there.”

Burgendorf said that it’s unlikely for a drone to merely strike the side of a helicopter because of the funnel the blades create.

Melvin Wagoner, a jet pilot at the Pocatello AvCenter, said it’s also dangerous for airplanes to impact with a drone.

Wagoner compared colliding with a drone to a rock being dropped off an interstate overpass and impacting a car.

“It’s incredibly dangerous for an airplane to impact anything,” Wagoner said.

Wagoner said a drone could damage the airframe or the engine of a plane if a collision occurred.

Ed Gygli, the Idaho State Police Unmanned Aerial Systems program director, said flying a drone into TFR airspace is “lunacy.”

“Why people who purchase these drones insist on going out and capturing an aerial image that frankly isn’t going to be that spectacular and would put an aircrew at risk of death is beyond me,” Gygli said.

Gygli said that responsible drone pilots need to know not to fly drones into firefighting airspace and should be aware of the rules and guidelines.

“There’s a lot of moving parts up there, and when a manned flight collides with an object it spells disaster,” Gygli said.