It was just before 6 a.m. when the ringing woke me up. Glancing at my cellphone, I wasn't surprised at that still-dark hour to see it was a SAR call, but when I answered, I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly in my sleepy fog. Did our coordinator say tornado?
Not only had he said tornado, but throughout the day, several more twisters would touch down in the Flagstaff area, one of which destroyed more than 30 homes and damaged about 100 others in Bellemont and toppled 28 freight train cars. Another twister originated in the Blue Ridge area, leaving a 15-mile swath of broken trees in its wake while miraculously missing nearby structures.
When all responding SAR members arrived at the building, we took off toward Bellemont, watching the dark clouds swirl overhead, scanning the sky near and far for any sign of more funnel clouds forming. As we drove, we talked about where we could take cover. One of my teammates pointed out a ditch and culvert, while another mentioned an overpass somewhere ahead that we could park beneath.
At one point, some of us stopped to set up a road block, directing drivers to turn around in the median and go back to Flagstaff. Semi trucks had been turned over on I-40 and another tornado had been spotted, heading toward the highway and again the Bellemont neighborhood.
A DPS officer eventually arrived to take over the road block, relieving us so we could continue on to the command center, at that time located in the fire station near the original tornado's path. The rain resumed full force as we passed Camper's World, where RVs had been mangled and tossed every which way in the parking area and sales yard. Debris was scattered across the road and median.
We waited at the fire station for assignments, listening to radio traffic about more tornadoes forming as we watched the lightning, rain, wind, and hail from the dry side of the bay windows.
Some time later, we were relocated to the NOAA building at Camp Navajo, considered a more secure building. Weather Service personnel were staring at their banks of colorful computer monitors and busily walking desk to desk, room to room, calm but clearly running on adrenaline. One man said, "This is what we all train for but hope never happens."
Eventually, SAR personnel were sent into the field to do welfare checks and damage assessments, with the exception of me and one other team member, who were asked to stay behind to monitor the radios, record the transmissions and activities on the computer, and do some mapping. The others headed out to get very wet while canvassing the Bellemont neighborhood.
At the end of the day, patches of blue sky began to emerge. The tornado warnings subsided and later the watch was lifted. The severe and unusual storm had left behind lots of damage and some minor injuries but, thankfully, no serious physical trauma or loss of life.
The next day, SAR teams were dispatched to search Forest Service roads, to make sure no campers or hunters had been stranded or injured.
*********************
Per the National Weather Service on October 6,2010....
A STRONG PACIFIC LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM LOCATED ACROSS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COMBINED WITH SUBSTANTIAL MOISTURE MOVING NORTH FROM MEXICO...LED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF WIDESPREAD SEVERE THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY ACROSS THE REGION WEDNESDAY. NUMEROUS REPORTS OF HAIL WERE RECEIVED...AS WELL AS FIVE CONFIRMED TORNADOES.
TORNADOES...
BLUE RIDGE...(153-212 AM)...FOREST SERVICE AND NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE EMPLOYEES VERIFIED A 10-15 MILE PATH WITH NUMEROUS TREES DOWN AND SEVERAL FOREST ROADS BLOCKED. DAMAGE INTENSITY VARIED CONSIDERABLY ALONG PATH, WHICH VARIED FROM 75 TO 400 YARDS WIDE.
BELLEMONT TORNADO #1...(507-535 AM)...CONSIDERABLE STRUCTURAL DAMAGE IN AND AROUND THE COMMUNITY OF BELLEMONT. AREAL AND GROUND SURVEYS VERIFIED A SEMI-CONTINUOUS TORNADO PATH FROM AT LEAST 9 MILES SOUTH OF BELLEMONT...EXTENDING NORTHWARD CROSSING HIGHWAY 180 NORTHWEST OF FLAGSTAFF. TOTAL PATH LENGTH OF AT LEAST 22 MILES. PRELIMINARY ESTIMATES OF DAMAGE INTENSITY IN THE COMMUNITY OF BELLEMONT PUT THIS TORNADO AT EF-1 ON THE ENHANCED FUJITA SCALE. MOST INTENSE DAMAGE (NOT YET RATED) WAS IN THE FOREST SOUTH AND JUST NORTH OF BELLEMONT.
BELLEMONT TORNADO #2...(558-640 AM)...THIS TORNADO CAUSED EXTENSIVE FOREST DAMAGE (PRIMARILY SOUTH OF BELLEMONT)...ALONG A CONTINUOUS TRACK WHICH EXTENDED FROM 15 MILES SOUTH OF BELLEMONT...EVENTUALLY CROSSING HIGHWAY 180 NORTHWEST OF FLAGSTAFF. 28 RAIL CARS DERAILED IN BELLEMONT...WITH ADDITIONAL STRUCTURAL AND AUTO DAMAGE. TOTAL PATH LENGTH OF AT LEAST 30 MILES. NO TORNADO INTENSITY HAS BEEN ESTIMATED YET.
MUNDS PARK...(1208-1220 PM)...THIS TORNADO WAS SIGHTED CROSSING INTERSTATE 17 MOVING NORTHBOUND...LATER OBSERVED 4 MILES SOUTH OF THE COUNTRY CLUB NEIGHBORHOOD ON THE EAST SIDE OF FLAGSTAFF. LITTLE SURFACE DAMAGE REPORTED AT THIS TIME.
AN ADDITIONAL TORNADO TRACK WAS DISCOVERED NORTH AND WEST OF FORT VALLEY NEAR THE FLAGSTAFF NORDIC CENTER. THIS TRACK WAS DISTINCTLY SEPARATE FROM THE TWO EARLIER BELLEMONT TORNADO TRACKS...HOWEVER APPEARED TO BE MUCH SHORTER IN LENGTH.
HAIL REPORTS...
CORNVILLE..........................2.00 INCH DIAMETER
PARKS..............................1.75 INCH DIAMETER
TEEC NOS POS.......................1.75 INCH DIAMETER
RIMROCK............................1.25 INCH DIAMETER
KACHINA VILLAGE....................1.00 INCH DIAMETER
COTTONWOOD 1 MI SOUTH..............1.00 INCH DIAMETER
MUNDS PARK 5 MI NORTH..............1.00 INCH DIAMETER
See also:
News video: 'Tornado train' rocks Arizona
Article: Bellemont Becomes Tornado Alley
Photos of tornado aftermath
Update: 8 Tornadoes now confirmed
These are my stories as a volunteer member of the Sheriff's Search and Rescue team in Coconino County, Arizona. I'll share what it's like to go from a beginner with a lot to learn to an experienced and, hopefully, valuable member of the team, as well as the missions, training, and other activities along the way.
What a Workout! A Patient Carry on the Peaks
She looked up at me from the Stokes litter, her eyes, nose, and mouth lined with dried blood, her upper lip, deeply split. She'd need some stitches there. I saw blood spattered on her shirt.
A drop of my sweat just missed her face. She noticed and seemed to smile at me apologetically with her eyes, but her injured mouth didn't move. The woman did answer, though, whenever someone asked how she was doing. She was okay, she would say, but her neck was bothering her.
She and her husband, both in their early 60s, had been enjoying a hike on a perfect afternoon on the Kachina Trail, the sky almost as blue as our SAR shirts, when she tripped and did a face-plant right into a rock. She'd injured her neck in the fall and, clearly, her face. We weren't sure if she had a concussion, but she was experiencing some anomalies with her vision.
She didn't complain a bit, though, as we maneuvered the litter up and down the rough trail, lifting it over rocks and sometimes struggling to maintain our footing on the narrow trail. It was not a smooth ride.
I'd been in the check-out line at the grocery store when the call came in. It would take me at least 45 minutes to get home, put all the perishable food away, and then get to the SAR building. Too long. So, I called our coordinator and asked where I could meet the team. I was told to drive to Snowbowl Road and, from there, take FS 522 (Friedline Prairie Road) about a mile in and look for the SAR vehicles at the corrals. From there, I'd hike up an unofficial trail to intersect the Kachina Trail. The patient was closer to the midpoint of the trail than the trailhead, so this would be a faster route.
Still reacclimating after my three months at a much lower altitude in Nepal, I was breathing heavily as I climbed, wondering how far up the trail the intersection was. I'd never hiked up from that road before. I pushed myself to maintain a steady pace as I tried to catch up with my teammates. Before I reached intersection, I saw a blue SAR shirt up ahead.
The last two teammates in the initial group were moving slowly. One of them wasn't feeling too well. The other, just ahead, was keeping an eye on her while carrying the extra weight of the backboard on his own back in addition to his pack. At the intersection, he handed off the backboard to me and stayed behind to check on our teammate. I pushed on, unsure how far up that roller coaster of a trail the rest of the team, the patient, and two Guardian medics were located. Turned out, they were farther up than I expected.
Just before I reached the others, one of my teammates met me on the trail and relieved me of the backboard. A fast hiker with long legs, he'd headed down to see if he could speed up the process of getting the backboard to the patient's location, so they could get her secured in the litter and ready for the carry-out. By that time, she'd been there for a couple of hours, and it would take a least a few more to get her to the waiting ambulance.
With just seven of us on the litter, it was a difficult evacuation. Only one person at a time could take a break, while the rest shifted sides to at least rest one arm a bit.
Using a piece of webbing hitched to the litter railing, crossed behind my neck and over my shoulders, and held by the hand away from the litter helped me make more of a contribution to the effort. Without the webbing, my arm on the litter was doing all the work, which meant my lack of upper body strength compared to my male teammates made me less effective. But my sore, tired arms and dripping sweat were testament to the fact that I was trying my hardest to help. By the time we reached the ambulance a few hours later, I was spent.
A day after the rescue, we received a nice thank you email from the patient's husband. He said his wife was doing well and didn't have a concussion after all. It's a rather rare treat to hear from a subject or the family after a mission.
A drop of my sweat just missed her face. She noticed and seemed to smile at me apologetically with her eyes, but her injured mouth didn't move. The woman did answer, though, whenever someone asked how she was doing. She was okay, she would say, but her neck was bothering her.
She and her husband, both in their early 60s, had been enjoying a hike on a perfect afternoon on the Kachina Trail, the sky almost as blue as our SAR shirts, when she tripped and did a face-plant right into a rock. She'd injured her neck in the fall and, clearly, her face. We weren't sure if she had a concussion, but she was experiencing some anomalies with her vision.
She didn't complain a bit, though, as we maneuvered the litter up and down the rough trail, lifting it over rocks and sometimes struggling to maintain our footing on the narrow trail. It was not a smooth ride.
I'd been in the check-out line at the grocery store when the call came in. It would take me at least 45 minutes to get home, put all the perishable food away, and then get to the SAR building. Too long. So, I called our coordinator and asked where I could meet the team. I was told to drive to Snowbowl Road and, from there, take FS 522 (Friedline Prairie Road) about a mile in and look for the SAR vehicles at the corrals. From there, I'd hike up an unofficial trail to intersect the Kachina Trail. The patient was closer to the midpoint of the trail than the trailhead, so this would be a faster route.
Still reacclimating after my three months at a much lower altitude in Nepal, I was breathing heavily as I climbed, wondering how far up the trail the intersection was. I'd never hiked up from that road before. I pushed myself to maintain a steady pace as I tried to catch up with my teammates. Before I reached intersection, I saw a blue SAR shirt up ahead.
The last two teammates in the initial group were moving slowly. One of them wasn't feeling too well. The other, just ahead, was keeping an eye on her while carrying the extra weight of the backboard on his own back in addition to his pack. At the intersection, he handed off the backboard to me and stayed behind to check on our teammate. I pushed on, unsure how far up that roller coaster of a trail the rest of the team, the patient, and two Guardian medics were located. Turned out, they were farther up than I expected.
Just before I reached the others, one of my teammates met me on the trail and relieved me of the backboard. A fast hiker with long legs, he'd headed down to see if he could speed up the process of getting the backboard to the patient's location, so they could get her secured in the litter and ready for the carry-out. By that time, she'd been there for a couple of hours, and it would take a least a few more to get her to the waiting ambulance.
With just seven of us on the litter, it was a difficult evacuation. Only one person at a time could take a break, while the rest shifted sides to at least rest one arm a bit.
Using a piece of webbing hitched to the litter railing, crossed behind my neck and over my shoulders, and held by the hand away from the litter helped me make more of a contribution to the effort. Without the webbing, my arm on the litter was doing all the work, which meant my lack of upper body strength compared to my male teammates made me less effective. But my sore, tired arms and dripping sweat were testament to the fact that I was trying my hardest to help. By the time we reached the ambulance a few hours later, I was spent.
A day after the rescue, we received a nice thank you email from the patient's husband. He said his wife was doing well and didn't have a concussion after all. It's a rather rare treat to hear from a subject or the family after a mission.
*******
The next day, our team received another call-out for another litter carry, this time on the Humphreys Trail. But one of our team members who lives near Humphreys responded directly and quickly and was able to walk the patient out. So the SAR response was canceled.
Two days after that, during the compass class field exercise for this year's SAR Academy members, we received yet another call-out for a litter carry off of Humprheys Trail. Seven of the 13 of us helping with the class left, reconvened at the SAR building to get some equipment, and then drove Code 3 (fast, like an ambulance) to the mountain, lights and sirens going. (I have to admit, that's fun.) By the time we reached the trailhead, however, that patient was also already at the trailhead.
A Tracking Challenge: Are We Making This Up?
"Are we making this up?" Robert asked, not for the first time that morning, talking to himself again as much as to me.
I stood there, staring at the faint depression in the pine needles.
"I don't think so," I replied without confidence. "I mean, we keep seeing things, and we were sure that was a partial print back there. So, I think we're on the track."
Whether it was the subject's track, though, was another question. We'd been told he was wearing "motorcycle boots," but we weren't sure of the tread and couldn't be sure the information was accurate, either. It would not have been the first time we'd been told a missing person was wearing one kind of shoe only to later find out they were wearing something very different.
We'd been trying to follow whomever's track that was for a couple of hours, starting not far from the campsite the missing man had been sharing with his son, until he walked away from there the day before and failed to return. It was now nearing noon, the worst time of day for tracking with the sun overhead.
We were sure someone had crawled under the barbed wire fence at the bottom of the hill—the grass was flattened, and there was a partial print nearby—and we were pretty sure that same someone had come up to the top of the hill where we were standing. But trying to track through pine needles is a real challenge. Robert and I kept having to kneel down and carefully move the needles out of the way to see if, in fact, that faint impression was indeed a footstep.
Then there were the little holes I saw here and there near the impressions. We'd been told the 77-year-old subject had been carrying a cut-off golf club as a hiking stick. The holes I saw now and then in the small patches of bare dirt seemed kind of small to be made by a cut-off golf club. But, then again, it had rained heavily during the night, and some dirt had probably washed back into the holes. Robert wasn't as convinced as I was that, yes indeed, those were cut-off golf club holes.
As the two of us made slow progress along the track, we heard a couple of our teammates on the radio, also following some tracks. Could we all be on the same track, I wondered, just made at different times and places? Based on their location, I thought it was possible.
As we were tracking, other teams were driving containment on Forest Service roads, a K9 team was in the field, and some folks from our mounted unit were searching on horseback. Other campers and a deputy in the area were also looking for the missing man. Given his age and the fact that he had not been carrying any supplies when he left the day before, I don't think I was the only one concerned about the subject's well-being.
BUT, as it turned out, he was in very good shape when he came walking along the meadow toward camp. Turns out, the man had indeed gotten lost and spent the rest of the day before and all that morning wandering around, trying to find his way back to his camp. He'd spent at least some of the night lying on the ground, trying to sleep. But aside from being a bit dehydrated, he was okay.
Before Robert and I headed back to base to debrief, we did have a chance to look at the subject's boots. Yep, those had been his tracks alright! And it seems that Robert and I were following the same tracks that our teammates had been following, only we were further along in the timeline. (That is, the tracks we were on were more recent.) From what the K9 handler said, the dogs had been showing signs of interest when they'd been getting close to where the man had apparently walked not long before they arrived. So, not only did this search have a positive outcome, but we SAR members also got some positive reinforcement that our skills had been working for us.
I stood there, staring at the faint depression in the pine needles.
"I don't think so," I replied without confidence. "I mean, we keep seeing things, and we were sure that was a partial print back there. So, I think we're on the track."
Whether it was the subject's track, though, was another question. We'd been told he was wearing "motorcycle boots," but we weren't sure of the tread and couldn't be sure the information was accurate, either. It would not have been the first time we'd been told a missing person was wearing one kind of shoe only to later find out they were wearing something very different.
We'd been trying to follow whomever's track that was for a couple of hours, starting not far from the campsite the missing man had been sharing with his son, until he walked away from there the day before and failed to return. It was now nearing noon, the worst time of day for tracking with the sun overhead.
We were sure someone had crawled under the barbed wire fence at the bottom of the hill—the grass was flattened, and there was a partial print nearby—and we were pretty sure that same someone had come up to the top of the hill where we were standing. But trying to track through pine needles is a real challenge. Robert and I kept having to kneel down and carefully move the needles out of the way to see if, in fact, that faint impression was indeed a footstep.
Then there were the little holes I saw here and there near the impressions. We'd been told the 77-year-old subject had been carrying a cut-off golf club as a hiking stick. The holes I saw now and then in the small patches of bare dirt seemed kind of small to be made by a cut-off golf club. But, then again, it had rained heavily during the night, and some dirt had probably washed back into the holes. Robert wasn't as convinced as I was that, yes indeed, those were cut-off golf club holes.
As the two of us made slow progress along the track, we heard a couple of our teammates on the radio, also following some tracks. Could we all be on the same track, I wondered, just made at different times and places? Based on their location, I thought it was possible.
As we were tracking, other teams were driving containment on Forest Service roads, a K9 team was in the field, and some folks from our mounted unit were searching on horseback. Other campers and a deputy in the area were also looking for the missing man. Given his age and the fact that he had not been carrying any supplies when he left the day before, I don't think I was the only one concerned about the subject's well-being.
BUT, as it turned out, he was in very good shape when he came walking along the meadow toward camp. Turns out, the man had indeed gotten lost and spent the rest of the day before and all that morning wandering around, trying to find his way back to his camp. He'd spent at least some of the night lying on the ground, trying to sleep. But aside from being a bit dehydrated, he was okay.
Before Robert and I headed back to base to debrief, we did have a chance to look at the subject's boots. Yep, those had been his tracks alright! And it seems that Robert and I were following the same tracks that our teammates had been following, only we were further along in the timeline. (That is, the tracks we were on were more recent.) From what the K9 handler said, the dogs had been showing signs of interest when they'd been getting close to where the man had apparently walked not long before they arrived. So, not only did this search have a positive outcome, but we SAR members also got some positive reinforcement that our skills had been working for us.
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