In the past few weeks, Beltrami County has been experiencing dangerous and rapidly expanding wildfires as well as extreme drought conditions.

When wildfires take place, there are a number of rules to ensure the safety of fire crews, residents, and the ability to quickly contain the fire. One rule concerns the flying of drones.

“You fly your drone, we can’t fly aircraft. That’s a fact,” said Kelly Sande, Minnesota DNR Fire Technician. “If we see a drone, we send the aircraft away for obvious reasons. We don’t want an airplane crash, we don’t want to wreck your drone, we don’t those pilots to get into that accident and, heaven forbid, come down and get killed. That’s the ultimate thing that can happen, is that somebody could lose a life over a drone.”

After destructive storms moved through Beltrami County in early July of 2012, the county looked at what they could do to better alert and inform citizens of extreme weather conditions and other events. They decided to go with CodeRED as a solution.

Enrolling in CodeRED is easy. Residents can create and manage their account to add or delete numbers for alerts. Residents can also sign up in the system as a guest. You can access the CodeRED enrollment page by visiting the Beltrami County website, clicking on “Law Enforcement”, and looking for the CodeRED banner.

Mobile users can text “Beltrami” to 99411 to have the enrollment page sent directly to their phone.

By — Destiny Wiggins