…while Drake has drone allegedly invade apartment.

Canada had a really bad couple of days with the drones recently, with one errant UAV throwing spanners into an ongoing rescue operation, while in Australia, Canadian rapper Drake had a drone invade his hotel accommodation – supposedly.

In Kimberley, a city of about 8,000 people to the South East of the British Columbia province, workers at Kimberley Search and Rescue (SAR) were in the midst of a rescue when they noticed an unidentified drone in the area, preventing them from potentially calling in a helicopter.

The rescue workers were working on rescuing four young skiers who had somehow got lost or disoriented while skiing at Kimberley Alpine Resort; and somehow ended up in Mark Creek.

“They were communicating with the ski hill for a while and then the ski hill realized that they actually weren’t below the Tamarack chair, which is where they thought they were,” Reid said.

“That is where the last rescue that we performed for the ski hill was, which was technically out of bounds. They realised holy smokes these kids are on the other side, so this is definitely not ours and they called 911 and got us cast out.”

The Kimberley SAR immediately responded, ultimately picking up the four skiers’ location. Reid said were all fine, just cold.

Reid said that for a rescue of this nature, they absolutely would have looked into requesting a helicopter.

“What we look for is what is the fastest, best resource to put into the area,” he explained. “And our go-to certainly is helicopter because of where we live and the length of time it takes to get people out.

“So I could fly a helicopter in there and pick them up and have it done in half an hour, or I could spend the three hours it took us to ski down and dress them up appropriately and then walk them to the point where we could put them on snowmobiles and then snowmobile them out, it just becomes quite a bit of a longer effort.

“A couple of challenges to what we do: if someone’s flying a drone, I can’t fly a helicopter,” said Peter Reid, manager and search manager with Kimberley SAR.

“As soon as that drone went in the air, the helicopter option was completely out the window. The public really needs to understand the airspace is highly controlled and helicopters will not fly if there’s a drone flying around. For obvious reasons, it could be pretty disastrous.

“So, unfortunately that meant that card was taken off the table for us.”

In the end, SAR had to tell the four to stay put, before putting them them on snowshoes so they could walk out and to some snowmobiles, before they got on their way back to safety.

“We had no idea who was running the drone, so we had no way of getting it to not fly, and it just became a serious hazard for us.”

Reid added that the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA), a volunteer search and rescue program, has drones that SAR could have utilised if needed, but because there was that uncontrolled drone in the area, that also was not an option.

Reid immediately notified command that there was a drone in the area and the management team made a social media post about it, which read, ‘If this is you, please get out of the area immediately!’

Within fifteen minutes the drone was gone, but Reid said at that point the helicopter was off the table as SAR couldn’t be sure who was flying the drone, and if it might return.

He added if they are doing a large search where they are running drones, they will put out a Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM, letting other air traffic know that they are operating in that area and that it should be avoided, allowing SAR to fly safely.

Meanwhile in Australia, a video has surfaced on social media of musician Drake throwing a slipper at a drone hovering around his apartment in Sydney.

In the video, Drake appears to be shocked and then angry at the sudden invasion of privacy, prompting him to pick up an orange coloured yeezy flop and toss it at the drone.

That would be the natural reaction. Right?

Except; not everybody was convinced.

A lot of people who have watched the video seem to think it has been staged, with one of the netizens picking up a silhouette of a person in the house and claiming he was actually the drone pilot.

Maybe it has not helped that the drone camera captured a laptop set on a desk in the house, which displayed a gambling site.

Some were able to identify the gambling site, which led to suspicions that this was a not cleverly hidden product placement by the singer and poster.

To be fair though, the singer himself has not come out to confirm or deny the social media speculation on whether the drone incident was a home invasion or just him playing with his mates. Or placing products as it we.

But whatever your take is not this; incidents like these are some of the biggest reasons why serious commercial drone proponents are experiencing problems with aviation regulators – who will cite criminal nuisance instances like these to keep the drones out of the lower skies.

It is not funny.