Mid to late July in southern California is the very heart of wildfire season. And with many years of drought ensuring the state’s forests are parched and as ready to erupt as physically possible, 2015 is already a terrible season. At the moment, the multiagency Incident Information System is registering 17 active wildfires in the state with over a 100,000 acres burnt or burning. Wildland firefighting is already a hot, exhausting, and a dangerous job, but, according to firefighters, there’s a new factor adding to the challenge: drones. As the New York Times reports, last month saw incidents involving five different fires in which fire crews had to pull back aircraft tasked with dumping water and chemicals onto fast-moving flames, including the one involved in this weekend’s viral image of a fire suddenly jumping a Los Angeles-area freeway. In that case, there were five drones at one point hovering over the fire.

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