Okanagan Lake DJI Drone Pilot Fined CAD $5,000 After Helicopter Pilot Broke Off Firefighting to Chase Him

A British Columbia court has ordered Kelowna realtor Derek Leippi to pay a CAD $5,000 fine (roughly USD $3,600) for flying a DJI drone from a boat on Okanagan Lake during the 2023 McDougall Creek wildfire, an incident that pulled a helicopter pilot off fire suppression to chase the unmanned aircraft. PetaPixel reported the sentencing this week, citing court coverage from the Vancouver Sun and CBC.

The presiding judge handed down the sentence on March 23, 2026, per Global News, a month past the original February 24 date. Leippi was found guilty on February 9 of violating British Columbia’s Wildfire Act. Maximum penalty: CAD $100,000, one year in jail, or both, plus liability for firefighting costs. Crown counsel sought CAD $15,000 and a public apology. Leippi, representing himself, asked for no fine.

The August 2023 Incident on Okanagan Lake

The flight happened on August 27, 2023, ten days after the McDougall Creek wildfire tore through the west side of Okanagan Lake. The fire destroyed more than 300 structures, including Okanagan Lake Resort, and forced the evacuation of around 35,000 people. Leippi took a boat onto the lake and launched a small DJI drone, described in court coverage as miniature class, to record video of the ruined resort.

Two BC Conservation Service officers patrolling the shoreline found him in an area where helicopters were loading water. Per the Vancouver Sun account cited by PetaPixel, they asked him to leave and he complied, but he kept flying at low altitude and the officers did not immediately notice. The helicopter pilot, working within feet of Leippi’s boat, spotted the drone and broke off firefighting for two attempted water drops on it from the bucket. Both missed. Engaging the drone was the pilot’s own call, and it cost two loads of water that could have gone on the fire. Officers returned when they saw the helicopter’s unusual flight pattern, watched Leippi land the drone, and seized it along with the controller and his phone.

Judge Rejected the “I Didn’t Know” Defense

Leippi told the court he was unaware of active fire suppression and saw no smoke or flames near the resort when he launched. The judge rejected that outright, writing that the scale of the fire, the mass evacuations, and the widespread property losses were common knowledge at the time. A reasonable person, she wrote, would have understood that neither the boat nor the drone belonged in that airspace.

During sentencing, Leippi argued that media coverage had already damaged his real estate career and that adding a CAD $15,000 fine would be “more fuel on a fire that’s already burning,” per the Nelson Star. The judge landed on CAD $5,000, citing mitigating factors: Leippi’s cooperation with officers and the fact that this was his first offense. She accepted his in-court remorse and dropped the Crown’s request for a formal apology. BC Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar had sharper words: “Don’t fly your drones and put the lives of British Columbians that are so heroic in fighting those fires on the line. Don’t be stupid.”

A Pattern of Underwhelming Penalties

Courts on both sides of the border have struggled to calibrate sentences for drone interference with wildfire response. In September 2025, Peter Tripp Akemann was sentenced to 14 days in federal prison, 30 days of home detention, and roughly USD $156,000 in restitution after his drone punched a three-by-six-inch hole in a Quebec government Super Scooper fighting the Palisades Fire. That collision actually grounded the aircraft. Leippi’s drone never touched the helicopter. Different jurisdictions, different statutes, different damage. The risk profile is identical.

The BC Wildfire Service has run a stated “zero tolerance” posture on drone incursions for years, a stance DroneXL covered in 2024. The National Interagency Fire Center logged 21 public drone incursions in a single U.S. wildfire season, and the problem only accelerated in 2025.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ve covered drone-versus-firefighter incidents for close to a decade, and the pattern is wearily consistent. Someone launches to grab footage of destruction, a crew breaks off from the actual fire, and the case grinds through courts for years before landing on a fine smaller than a homeowner’s evacuation costs. Leippi’s CAD $5,000 is one third of what Crown counsel asked for, and a rounding error against the CAD $100,000 the statute allows.

The problem is not the judge. The reasoning on the mitigating factors is defensible. The problem is that the Wildfire Act’s real teeth, cost recovery for firefighting operations, never got used. Helicopter time over a BC wildfire runs into thousands of dollars per hour. A sentence that billed Leippi for the two wasted water loads and the minutes spent chasing his drone would have sent a clearer signal than a flat fine.

If a 2026 BC wildfire drone incursion case reaches sentencing, Crown counsel will seek cost recovery, not just a statutory fine. A CAD $5,000 outcome will not deter the next realtor with a Mini 4 and a boat.

The featured photo is for illustration purposes only, while we do know it was a DJI drone that was involved in this story, we do not know exactly which model.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.