China uses drone to restore phone coverage, assess damage after floods
- The specialist Wing Loong 2H flew twice from the south to the central Henan province, which was crippled by power and communications outages
- It hovered for five hours during heavy rain to serve as an airborne base station, before restoring communication at a flooded hospital
It represented the first disaster relief deployment for the Wing Loong 2H emergency relief unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which had been tested in an exercise last October for tasks such as restoring communications and sending real-time images in areas without base station coverage.
Emergency services once relied on helicopters to drop supplies and equipment in disaster-hit areas, but all-weather, long-duration drones such as the Wing Loong 2H can perform relief operations more safely and efficiently.
The Wing Loong 2H was twice flown from Guizhou province in the south to the central Henan province. The first deployment came on Wednesday afternoon after the emergency management ministry liaised with China Mobile, whose network was used.
02:13
Flood-hit residents of China’s Henan province rescued after being trapped for three days
Following a four-hour flight, the drone reached the flood-ravaged city of Gongyi, west of Henan’s capital Zhengzhou. Among the worst-hit areas, Gongyi was hit by power outages and loss of communications because of the heavy rain.