Heat-vision drone finds missing boy and his dog alive in field after 10 hours in freezing weather

A heat-vision drone has done what a 600-person strong volunteer search party couldn’t and tracked down a missing boy and his dog.

A heat-vision drone has found a missing boy and his dog safe and alive after the pair spent almost 10 hours in freezing conditions.

Ethan Haus, 6, hopped off the school bus with his sibling and then took off from his family home in Sherburne County, Minnesota with dog Remington shortly after 4pm last Tuesday.

While some used their time to pester law enforcement social media accounts with comments asking why no AMBER Alert had been issued (despite the incident not meeting the strict requirements to issue said alert for an abducted child), more than 600 people volunteered their time to search for Ethan after he failed to return home.

A heat-vision drone has been used to find a missing boy in the US.

They joined a dozen other police, fire and community agencies, including the FBI.

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“This truly was the epitome of a community caring for its own,” Sherburne County Sheriff Joel Brott said. “To see the outpouring of support in such a short time period to come out and help find this boy and his dog is heartwarming.”

Law enforcement agencies used dogs, helicopters and drones in the search, but it wasn’t one of their aerial eyes that found the pair.

Local aerial photographer Steve Fines also joined in, using a thermal imaging camera attached to a drone to find Ethan and Remington at around 1.50am.

The pair were spotted from the air lying down in a cornfield close to two kilometres away from Ethan’s house.

The Sherburne County Sheriff's Office shared footage of the pair being found.

Check out the video that was shot by Fines Aerial Imaging, LLC last night that shows the moment Ethan and his dog are...

Posted by Sherburne County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday, 16 October 2019

Ethan was cold when the search party found him but otherwise in good health.

Temperatures in the area dropped as low as minus one degree.

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Like a true hero, Mr Fines wasn’t in a rush to take too much credit for the find.

“While I was running the camera that found him … I only knew in which direction to look because volunteers on the ground had found a footprint that pointed me in the right direction,” Mr Fines later wrote on Facebook alongside a picture of the search party.

“I knew which areas had already been searched because of the excellent co-ordination of the Sherburne County Sheriff. I had other volunteers running radios to co-ordinate ground search parties — the people moving across really rough ground to find him.

I just wanted to give a heartfelt thank you to all the folks who have reached out to me after my drone and thermal...

Posted by Fines Aerial Imaging, LLC on Thursday, 17 October 2019

“There were 600 of us that found Ethan that night,” Mr Fines said.

Ethan later thanked all those involved in the search for finding him in a video posted to Facebook by a family member.