ORLANDO, Fla. — After Saturday’s drone show incident at Lake Eola, safety concerns are now top of mind, especially since drone shows have become increasingly popular across the country.

What You Need To Know

  • A Lake Eola drone show incident sent one child to hospital over the weekend

  • One drone expert says technical malfunctions like these can unfortunately happen at any given moment, but people should not stray away from them because of it

  • Drone operator from the holiday drone show, Sky Elements, could not provide comment on the situation yet because of an active investigation into the matter

Some experts weighed in on the risks associated with large-scale drone shows like the one at Lake Eola, which led to the hospitalization of a child who was in the crowd.

The message that owner Paul Charbonnet of drone company Atmosphere Drones, wants people to take away from this incident is that drones, like airplanes, can experience technical malfunctions at any given moment.

“Especially in the scenario where you’re flying hundreds or thousands of drones… the potential of having something be off just a little bit is always there,” said Charbonnet.

He says when it comes to large-scale projects, it’s important to know that more drones equal more risks; things like signal interference, hardware issues and the environment where the show takes place.

“In these drone shows there is a lot of room between the drones. I’d probably say 10 or more feet from the ones I’ve seen, so they do space them out to give that margin of error,” said Charbonnet.

At the end of the day, though, he doesn’t want people to view them as unsafe.

“I would evaluate that and be like OK if the drone can go this far malfunctioning, then let’s make our radius bigger,” he said in reference to the holiday drone show incident.

Around 25,000 people had gathered around Lake Eola to see the show that went haywire towards the end.

“I went live on Facebook to show my friends, and at the very end. I said oh my god, there are some falling,” said Dorine Olive.

Olive says no one around thought twice about the incident at the time until it was reported a spectator was hospitalized.

“I shut my video off and nobody was talking about it. Everyone just went about their merry way. I don’t think we realized what the effects of what just happened,” said Olive.

Emma Reiley watched from the southeast side of the lake and noticed the drones were not in sync together.

“I mean there was a little bit of discombobulation when they were trying to get the drones in the air and get them down,” said Reiley. “And the images, it just seemed like they were struggling to get the drones in position to get the clear view of it.”

Spectrum News reached out to the drone operator from the holiday drone show, Sky Elements, but they could not provide comment on the situation for the time being given that this is an active investigation.

In a statement, the city of Orlando says it remains in contact with the vendor and the FAA.