The following month, a drone’s motor shut off as it switched from an upward flight path to flying straight ahead. Two safety features — one that’s supposed to land the drone in this type of situation and another that stabilizes the drone — both failed. As a result, the drone flipped upside down and dropped from 160 feet in the air, leading to a brush fire that stretched across 25 acres. It was later put out by the local fire department.
Drones with umbrellas is our plan here at Amazon for the former.
I'm still working on the latter, but it's a contract position and I'm making a killing, so I'm going to hold off on a solution for a while.