Rescues

Rescues

From Page A1

his fate was then in the capable hands of Jordan and Law Enforcement Park Ranger Lora Peppers

These and other Park Rangers do about two rescues a month on average, mainly in warm weather. Some searches will field as many as several hundred searchers. One last summer had 275 and a rescue on Jan. 24 of a naked man involved 34 searchers plus the helicopter crew and dog handlers.

The first thing rangers do is determine the “point last seen” of the missing person. In the case of the lost boy, he was last seen by his schoolmates eating lunch on the crest and by some hikers a few minutes later. That was about 3 p.m., so the rangers knew the youngster had been on his own already for over two hours.

“Search management is part science and part art,” Jordan said. Everybody involved from rangers to volunteers to dog team handlers to helicopter pilots knows his job and has to be certified in their skills. “The field search manager might be a park botanist,” Jordan said, “but he has been trained and certified as a search field manager too.”

A search coming together is like a military operation where there is a chain of command and set assignments for each person.

The second step in ' most searches is to quickly draw a four quadrant map, marking the area with the “greatest likelihood of this person being found” down to the least likely. The searchers are drawing on their experience and facts about the missing person and the area around the “point last seen.”

“If he’s a birder (bird watcher,) you know he may have headed for the greatest habitat,” Jordan said. Interviews with family members and others who know the missing person are important. The rangers interviewed the parents of the 11year-old and got some encouraging news: he was a smart youngster, who had water and food and a warm flannel shirt.

Nevertheless, Old Rag Mountain is the most dangerous