Farmer saves stranded neighbour with drone
A jerry-rigged drone has been used to airlift a man who was trapped on a rooftop in southern China by rising flood waters.
Footage has emerged showing the young man being rescued on Tuesday evening when a neighbour spotted him calling for help from the roof of his crumbling two-story house in the city Liuzhou.
Fast-flowing waters coursing through the streets had prevented rescue speedboats from coming to the man's assistance for the previous hour.
The neighbour, who gave his name as Mr Lai, devised a rescue plan using his agricultural drone, a device capable of carrying weights of up to 100kg, which is normally used to haul bricks and cement or spray pesticides.
Mr Lai fashioned a makeshift harness by tying a sandbag to one end of the drone's lifting rope and attaching a safety buckle, local media said.
Safe landing
He flew the drone to the man and instructed him over the phone to sit on the sandbag and to tie his hands and feet with the safety buckle to the drone's rope.
Footage captured by a witness shows the drone then soaring 65ft into the air with the man hanging underneath, his legs dangling through the harness.
The drone then navigates through trees and pylons before safely depositing its passenger on a road below. The rescue operation took less than two minutes.
Mr Lai, who first learnt how to pilot a drone in August, admitted what he did was illegal but said he feared the house could collapse at any moment.
'I know that manned drones are illegal, but at the time I was worried about the house collapsing and was eager to save people, so I don't recommend that you imitate it,' he told The Beijing News.
China hit by storms
Over the past two days, 13 major rivers in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Hainan were hit by storms and had risen above their warning levels, state television reported, citing the Ministry of Water Resources.
Record downpours in Rongjiang, in the south-east of the country, left six dead and forced more than 80,000 people to flee their homes. The amount of rain that fell over 72 hours was double the city's average for June.
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