Democrat & Chronicle: EagleView Is There When Natural Disasters Strike
After a series of sudden tornadoes swept through Iowa two weeks ago, EagleView was prepared. EagleView’s storm response team, based out of the Rochester office, began looking at weather reports, coordinating flight plans, and staging planes throughout the state.
The Democrat & Chronicle visited the Rochester office to get a close look at our storm response program.
It was late afternoon when their cellphones started buzzing, alerting employees at the Henrietta campus of EagleView that a series of tornadoes had torn through central Iowa. Although the devastating event was happening 900 miles away, EagleView’s storm response team leaped into action.
A meteorologist on staff began looking at weather radar to pinpoint the number of twisters and locate their paths of destruction. Flight managers were working with their pilots to get planes to the area quickly, and the operations team started to plot precise flight plans that would allow them to quickly capture high-resolution aerial photos of the places that had been impacted.
When the sun came up the next morning, EagleView planes were in the air taking high-resolution photographs. They covered 200 square miles near the city of Marshalltown, which was hardest hit. They also flew over the towns of Pella and Bondurant, capturing images at a resolution of 3 inches per pixel.
In the event of a natural disaster, EagleView has a singular mission: a fast and thorough response to communities in need.
“Our goal is always to provide the best response we can, and not just for our customers. We also share images with FEMA and others,” Jay Martin, who was recently promoted to Chief Operating Officer, at EagleView, told the Democrat & Chronicle. “Marshalltown, Iowa, is not a customer of ours but we delivered that imagery to their emergency response organization to help them out.”
Learn more about EagleView’s disaster response program and get a glimpse into our Rochester office. Read the rest on the Democrat & Chronicle website.
