So just fly the damn helicopters and forget the drones. The chance of a drone taking out a helicopter almost certainly so low as to be not worth worrying about.

Your[1] argument seems to be "We don't know if they're dangerous, I personally don't think they are so we should just allow them". The first part is okay, the second part I strongly disagree with. We're dealing with an emergency situation here, if drones can damage helicopters/hamper the efforts of the firefighters and they're not banned there is the potential of loss of life. If they don't, and we ban them, there's the loss of cool pictures, and personal freedom in a disaster zone. Something which we have experienced without problems for ages now.

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.

You sound like a drone enthusiast, so let's play the odds.

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.

Yeah, I think the one thing we can all agree on is that firefighters are a bunch of scaredy cats who need to accept a little risk in their jobs.

If this was the case, why would aircraft (including helicopters) be so wary of birds? Birds generally have much lower mass than your average multirotor, so if one of those can hurt an aircraft, why can't a drone?

I was thinking the rotor wash from the much-larger-than-toy-drone helicopters would handle the drones just fine.

Assuming the drone is below the helicopter. It's just as likely the drone would be above the helicopter and rotor wash would pull the drone _towards_ the turbine inlets.