Drones in a restricted flight zone, in a fire situation will ground fire-fighting helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. That stops essential fire suppression operations which allows fires to get out of control. In turn, this hurts people. Is that clear enough?
Sure, perhaps some research would be in order to determine if/what kind of drones can cause issues, and allow those which are safe (or atleast give licenses to news drones and the like for public interest purposes). But erring on the side of caution before the results are in does not seem to be a bad idea IMHO.
[1] as in, the people in this thread arguing for the use of drones, not you as an individual.
Assume for a bit that there is a low but non-zero chance that a helicopter could be damaged by a drone.
Now let's imagine the unlikely scenario that a helicopter and drone collide, resulting in loss of the helicopter and death of its operator.
Do you think the public response to that scenario is going to leave much of the drone hobbyist ecosystem intact? Or is it more likely (human nature being what it is, especially when faced with an event in the "We could have prevented this but failed to" category) that laws will be passed to ban drone operation unless the operator has a year of training, N hours of flight time, retinal scans on record, and a giant red 'D' branded on their chest?
For the health of the drone hobbyist ecosystem, it would be wise for drone operators to steer clear of emergency response situations so as to not even make the question of what to do in the event of a crash a necessary one to answer.
Likely - maybe not, but definitely possible.
http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/03/after-bird-blinds...
Firefighters are probably just worried about expensive drones ;-)
Where's the science. Can a drone actually hurt a helicopter. And did the drone controllers know they were causing an issue, I doubt it.