Pittman said he was a half-mile ahead of the ambulance as both were heading toward the school with emergency lights flashing. He said the driver of the Saturn, a 16- to 18-year-old male, pulled over on the eastbound right shoulder as Pittman drove past.

Pittman said the driver of the SUV did not see the ambulance behind his vehicle and made a left turn into TC's Garage, located on westbound Brooklyn Road across from where he pulled over.

Pittman said as the SUV turned, the ambulance struck it on the driver-side door. The SUV ended up 30 yards from the road in tall grass. The ambulance was off the road in front of TC's Garage. Both vehicles were heavily damaged.

 drones have turned out to be incredible tools for disaster response and search and rescue teams. To date, robots have been used in 43 major disasters worldwide, according to data provided by the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), and most of those bots are drones. It seems like a no-brainer. Unmanned systems can provide valuable reconnaissance and infiltrate dangerous or unfamiliar environments to speed up response times during floods or fires, scenarios where each passing minute has consequences for survivability. The technology already exists, and much of it is now available off-the-shelf.

The Phantom 4, for example, has an integrated camera and long flying range, which could make it a suitable search drone. Training would be minimal (the newest drones literally fly themselves in most cases), so integration into current emergency response crews would be simple.

Jackson County Search and Rescue Manager Chris Duran said the litter, which weighs only 16 pounds, is an expensive piece of equipment that not all search and rescue agencies in the California Oregon Regional Search and Rescue network have, and the exercise is an opportunity to get familiar with it. Before the litter began its ascent to the top of the cliff, Mark Unger used a video feed from a flying drone to check on the rescuer at the bottom and the person inside the litter.The rope exercise, taught by an instructor from Bend-based Crackerjack First Response Specialists, was one of many classes available at the annual CORSAR Summer Exercise, which had exercises for 4-wheeler search-and-rescue teams, paramedics, canine and horse-mounted teams. Participants represented eight counties, including Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, Klamath, Curry and Coos counties in Oregon and Siskiyou and Del Norte counties in California.The event was an opportunity for vendors to introduce new technology to rescuers for consideration. In an exercise where rescuers needed to extract a sunken boat from Hyatt Lake, San Jose-based Deep Ocean Engineering demonstrated its Phantom T5 underwater drone. John Bergman and Raul Pena, vice presidents of Deep Ocean, showcased the capabilities of the drone, which is designed for waters that may be treacherous or difficult to see through for human divers. the drone can mark areas of interest and can run autonomously so searchers can focus on the camera feed.