[pct-l] Lost Hiker Found

[James Vesely]

I wonder what would be the cost effectiveness if the state or federal
gonernment were to subsdize something like SPOT for outdoors people?   

A couple of helicopters circling around for days and dozens of people on
the ground searching can't be cheap.  

Jim

------------------------------


 
From: pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net
[mailto:pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net] On Behalf Of Ken Murray
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 9:45 AM
To: .
Subject: Re: [pct-l] Lost Hiker Found

I may be confused by your narrative, if I misunderstand, sorry.

In SAR operations, there are often MANY teams sent out, each of which is
given a specific area to cover.  The teams should NOT go anywhere else.
Part of the skill that SAR uses is "mantracking", which involves
tracking boot/shoe tracks.  Having a bunch of people running all over
the place destroys that evidence.  This can be critical in the
situations where a person is off-trail.  It drives them crazy when a
bunch of volunteer go in and destroy those clues.

It is easy to look at things "after the fact", and say "AHA!  If they
just send hikers out in a radial pattern, they'd have found the person
faster.  The problem, of course, is that they DONT know those answers
prior to a person being found.  So there are processes that are designed
to work the maximal percentage of time, with the shortest AVERAGE search
time.  For a particular search it may work out to be not the fastest,
but you can't know that in advance.

BTW, if you are trying to get the attention of a helicopter (it is
UNBELIEVABLY hard to spot someone on the ground!!), the best way to do
this is to light a small fire, and throw some leaves/needles on it...a
lot of smoke.  Easy to spot from the air, will never be thought to be
normal.




=============================
I saw the rescue searchers on foot stop at the county line going up the
mountain. They need to recruit some PCT hiker volunteers who aren't
stopped
by county lines and give them a radio.

I saw the S&R helecopter miss the hiker while it was flying up Mission
Creek - I had to point and signal and wave, eventually scrawling a
message
in the sand - they 'found' him a half hour later. Again, in this case, a
hiker on the ground would have been better, faster and less expensive.


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