L.A. County Fire Department officials issued another warning to residents Tuesday after the Max Fire burned 45 acres of brush Monday in Stevenson Ranch.  The fire prompted evacuation orders for homes throughout a Pico Canyon-Stevenson Ranch residential area, according to the Genasys Prot ect app, which first responders used Monday to communicate the orders.   The fire is believed to have come within “minutes” of costing an unknown number of residents their homes, according to first responder radio dispatch traffic.   In the incident’s aftermath Tuesday, Assistant Fire Chief Pat Sprengel of the L.A. County Fire Department discussed a different scare firefighters also had to contend with while fighting the fire: private drone use.  “So early on in an incident, there was report of possible drones, most likely private citizen drones — we reported it to the Sheriff’s Department,” Sprengel said, which is the department’s normal procedure.  A spokeswoman for the SCV Sheriff’s Station did not respond to a phone call seeking comment on any potential enforcement activity connected to the fire and the station’s incident response.  But Sprengel said the activity is reported right away because it represents a significant threat to their firefighting efforts.  “It becomes an immediate danger, especially when we’re doing water-dropping,” Sprengel said, “because we’re doing water-dropping from, probably typically 100, 150 feet in the air, so it can, it can become an issue right away.”  Any commercial, media or private drones are limited to 400 feet above the ground, which is more than enough to cause a dangerous collision. Drone use also is forbidden in a wildfire situation, according to federal regulators.  Local and federal regulators made a joint effort to combat “wildfire-related crimes” with a task force last year, following the Eaton and Palisades fires, among others.  One of the most high-profile incidents that came out of that investigation was the prosecution of a man who flew a drone in violation of temporary flight restrictions Jan. 9, 2025, during the Palisades Fire.  An aircraft was sidelined after a midair collision with the drone, which the operator had reportedly lost sight of.   “The aircraft, commonly referred to as a ‘super scooper,’ was conducting fire suppression operations at the Palisades Fire near Malibu, and was able to land safely,” according to a post from the U.S. Forest Service. “The collision left a 3-inch by 6-inch hole in the left wing.”  In that case, the defendant, a business executive named Peter Tripp Akemann, received a sentence in September of 14 days imprisonment, 30 days of home confinement, 24 months of supervised release, $146,765 in restitution, a $9,500 fine, and a $25 special assessment for unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft system, according to the Department of Transportation website.  The post County Fire reports drone concerns appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ...read more read less