The floods from Helene had the power to move entire towns; cars and trucks were no exception. Once the water receded, vehicles big and small were left scattered on the landscape.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — East Tennessee needs a lot of resources to recover. That includes basics like food and shelter. But, it also means other projects you maybe never thought about, including finding the vehicles that were picked up and swept away by the rushing waters. One Middle Tennessee county is stepping up to help with that important job.
The floods from Helene had the power to move entire towns; cars and trucks were no exception. Once the water receded, vehicles big and small were left scattered on the landscape.
From here in Middle Tennessee, Mike Curtis could hardly believe what he was seeing out of Washington County in East Tennessee.
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“It is devastating. I have seen a lot of damage in my time, And this is probably the worst I have ever seen,” said Curtis.
Curtis wanted to help out in any way he could. “I was a volunteer firefighter for 15 years, EMT for 8 years.”
And now he’s the manager of Geographic Information Systems for Rutherford County.
His team makes interactive maps that give a plethora of information, from zoning to city boundaries. Turns out, he can also use this same technology to map the exact location of the cars and trucks the flood waters picked up and moved in East Tennessee. But first, he had to collect thousands of photos using drones on the ground in Washington County.
“It took approximately 24 hours for 3,000 images.”
Then, back in Rutherford County, Curtis and his team of two analysts and a mapper got to work.
“I just take a batch of images, drop them into the software, adjust some parameters to make the software give me the product that I want. I hit go. And I just let it go,” said Curtis. “It has GPS coordinates built into that picture. And the software takes all of those pictures and merges them together to make one image.”
Washington County can now use these images to find missing vehicles, get them back to their owner and make sure they are not leaking dangerous fuel. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the technology team in Rutherford County.
“Service to my community is what I thrive on. And this allowed me to help another community.”
The work is not done yet. They have processed 10,000 photos from drones alone, and plan to get more from airplanes.