Mountain Rescue Association Tests: One Down, Two To Go

Our team has decided to apply for membership in the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA). The MRA is made up of mountain rescue teams from around the country and has strict requirements for membership. The teams make up the association rather than individual members.

To become accredited by MRA, a team has to pass three different field tests based on guidelines established by the association. The tests are conducted on appropriate terrain in the team's home area by at least three current MRA teams working together to evaluate the applicant group that's being tested. The tests include high-angle rescue (rock rescue), ice and snow, and wilderness search. Accredited teams must retest every five years to maintain their accreditation.

From the MRA website: 

"The Mountain Rescue Association ... was established in 1959 at Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, Oregon, making us the oldest Search and Rescue association in the United States.With over 90 government authorized units in the US, Canada and other countries, the MRA has grown to become the critical mountain search and rescue resource in the United States.

"Because MRA teams are test-qualified by their peers, local, state, and federal agencies feel confident about working with them on search and rescue operations."

Our team was very happy to pass the first of three tests: Wilderness Search. It was run like any real search operation that's gone beyond the hasty search phase. In this case, the hasty phase was verbalized by our coordinator as all participants and evaluators gathered around the command trailer for the briefing. As usual, searchers were given packets with information about the missing subjects, maps of the area, the weather forecast, and safety and communications information. When all field teams had their assignments, we headed out to do what we always do... except, this time, we were being watched and evaluated and had to answer evaluators' questions as we worked.

All in all, the mission went really well. Teams located most of the clues that had been placed in the rather large search area, and we located both subjects, one of whom required medical evaluation and care and a litter evacuation to an imaginary waiting ambulance. The other subject, who was mobile, was found by one of the containment teams driving Forest Service roads.

At the end of the mission later that afternoon, evaluators met privately to discuss the operation and how we did, then came over to our waiting group to give us feedback and announce that we'd passed. Yay!

And now for test number two, rock rescue, in October. So, that means extra practice for many of us on the technical rescue team. Here's Patrick practicing a mid-face litter scoop in the SAR building (without the cliff face, that is):

The rescuer gets the injured victim into the "tuxedo" to protect his spine.

The rescuer maneuvers the patient into the litter.

Tah-dah! Ready for raise.

 In other Coconino County SAR news, our team was involved in a body recovery below Midgley Bridge in Sedona. See: Midgley Bridge Suicide Briefly Closes 89A.

The Stinkiest SAR Mission I've Been On

All the recorded call-out message said was "evidence search" with no further details. Our team was being requested by local law enforcement for Monday morning. So, I checked my calendar and, being free that day, called in and left my usual "This is Deb, unit number 6-2-0, I'll be responding" message. I got a phone call from the lieutenant later that evening.

Oh. The evidence search would be at the dump, he said. Hm. Okay, well... why not? Might as well go and see what such a search is like. And it was for a good cause, so...

So, on Monday morning, I showed up at the SAR building with plenty of motivation. Yep, I was gonna find some evidence at the landfill! Let's go, team!

We met up with some volunteers from C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team) who'd be accompanying us in this glamorous task and headed to the site, where we were were briefed on dump search safety by the landfill manager and then introduced to the friendly and very appreciative law enforcement contingent. As we sat around in the break room at the main office, I was thinking, hey, this wouldn't be bad at all. Nice people to search with, and I didn't smell a thing!

We all drove to the top of the hill where we'd be searching. With the help of the landfill folks, detectives had determined where exactly the bag of trash that held the coveted item had been deposited a week earlier. That is, where in a 100x50-foot and 12-foot deep area.  Folks, that's over 60,000 cubic feet of trash. And it had been covered with dirt and heavily rained on since then. And what we were looking for was quite small. (Sorry, can't tell ya anything about the item or the case because it's ongoing.)

With the windows of the truck rolled up and the air conditioning on, everything seemed fine. And we'd be wearing Tyvek suits and booties, gloves, and face masks. So, how bad could it be?

And then I opened the door.

Beverly models the fashion of the day.

Ugh!! I frantically located a face mask, which cut the "ugh!!" factor down by no more than about 5%.

Al gets all suited up.

But, okay, I was there to do a job, and, by George, I was gonna do the best I could! So, I took my mini-garden rake, the kind that's about 10 inches long, and started in on the big batch of trash the backhoe had scooped up and spread out—the first of many, many, many scoops.

The backhoe scoops and the bucket loader pushes what we'd searched out of the way.

Meanwhile, I tried not to pay attention to the stakes that marked the entire area to be searched. Oh... my... god, that was a lot of garbage. But I raked and raked, my tool hardly making a dent in the woven mass of trash. So, I used my gloved hands too as I breathed through my mouth inside my face mask and sweated profusely in my stylish Tyvek suit. That stuff does not breathe.

These booties didn't hold up for long.

As we searched, we kept altering our methods, trying to be as efficient as possible. It was a little like a stinky logic problem. One of the officers was sent out to buy different tools—longer rakes and shovels—so we didn't have to bend over so much. Eventually, a larger piece of equipment showed up, rented from someplace in Phoenix, so the scoops got much bigger, too. And faster. We raked and raked our butts off, I tell you.

But after hours of raking, shoveling, picking, and being on the verge of puking, we'd had no luck and had searched just a small portion of the designated area. We peeled off our Tyvek and headed out. Despite the protective suits, the stink had seeped through and permeated our clothing, our hair, our boots, and our vehicles, so much so that we could hardly stand ourselves (or each other) on the ride back.

When I got in my own car at the SAR building, I rolled down all the windows and made sure my seat was well covered. When I got home, everything I was wearing came off in the garage. The boots... well, those are still airing out outside almost a week later. The clothes were immediately washed (twice), and I took one of the longest showers of my life.

Needless to say, I declined a second day of evidence searching at the dump. I'm happy to report, however, that the next day's search was successful. Coveted item found!

Update: The Search for Little Sylar is Over

Just a brief post to share this news with you regarding my earlier entry about two-year-old Sylar Newton, who went missing from the Beaver Creek Campground on July 24th. His skeletal remains were located today.

Read the news on the Arizona Daily Sun site.

I just read in another news story that the remains were found in a wash at about 1 p.m. this afternoon. 

A Search with a Tragic Ending

On Monday evening, August 2, Emmett Trapp's mom awoke from a nap and discovered her two-year-old son, one of her four children, was missing from their home in Dewey, Arizona. After family and neighbors searched the area without luck, they called 9-1-1.

Yavapai County Sheriff's deputies arrived within 10 minutes, and the search quickly expanded to include law enforcement personnel, search and rescue teams from multiple counties, and other citizen volunteers. As of dawn on Wednesday morning, Emmett still had not been found.

Searchers from multiple agencies and counties at base, getting ready to deploy

Our SAR team from Coconino County was called to assist beginning on Wednesday. Two of my teammates and I and three golden retriever area search dogs arrived at Incident Command before 6 a.m. More of our teammates would join the search later that morning, but the three of us wanted to get started with the dogs as early as possible since they work better in the cooler air. When they get too hot, the dogs breathe more through their mouths so their noses can't work as effectively.

Cindy gets her boys ready to go

After checking in at base, we received our assignment and went directly to our search segment. Cindy, our SAR dog handler, determined the direction of the barely detectable breeze with her little bottle of powder, positioned us accordingly for the dogs, then worked with her canine partners while also searching the thick brush herself. Her cross-trained dogs would alert her if they detected human scent, living or not.

The dogs are already working as we head to our assigned segment.

My other partner and I flanked Cindy on either side and slightly behind her, taking care of the navigation and doing our parts in the grid search. We pushed through the tangled mass of cat claw, which grabbed at our clothing and skin, trying our best to stay in formation despite the terrain. A small child could easily crawl under the bushes and be very hard to see.

After we'd covered more than half of our assigned area, another field team of 14 searcher moved into that same segment behind us, walking a grid perpendicular to ours.

View of base from our first assigned search segment on the hill

The media hang out on the periphery of the search area

 

 

 

Eventually, Incident Command gave the three of us a new assignment—to work together as a K-9 team and two human man-trackers—when another field team located what looked like part of a small footprint. So we relocated to the site of that partial print and began to work the track.

We were reassigned again when another field team located fresher footprints, also small and clearly barefoot as Emmett had been reported to be and even further from the Trapps' home than we were. So, we got in our truck and took off to jump ahead of those tracks, which were headed in the direction of the highway. Our assignment was to determine if the tracks crossed beneath the highway, through the culverts. If not, we were told to work in the opposite direction of the team following the track, so we'd be going toward them. Emmett would hopefully be somewhere in the middle.

But the  search came to an end just as we arrived at our new area. Sure enough, Emmett had been between us and the team on the track, who located him. Sadly, little Emmett had not survived.

Back Home And Back To SAR

I hadn't planned to respond to any SAR calls for at least a week after coming home from Nepal. I figured I'd take a little break after being on the other side of the planet for a few months, spend some time catching up on my to-do list, reorganize my SAR pack, and generally just chill out.

But I couldn't resist. A couple of days after I got back, when there was a second call-out within a half hour for more volunteers to assist Yavapai County Search and Rescue with a search for a missing two-year-old, I dialed the SAR line after listening to the message and left one of my own. "This is Deb, number 6-2-0. I'm responding."

The call was for the following morning, to meet at the SAR building at 6 a.m. Soon after getting there, I was headed south to Beaver Creek Campground near Sedona with a teammate from general SAR along with a member of the mounted unit and his horse. Coconino County SAR had been assisting with this search for the previous two days, also.

When we got to the staging area and signed in, the three of us were given our assignment: a rather large, rugged area, thick with cat claw and cactus. One boundary of our search area was the creek that runs alongside the campground from which little Sylar Newton had gone missing in the middle of the night a few days earlier.

We searched as thoroughly as we could all day, doing our best to stay hydrated and focused as we dripped with sweat in the intense heat and humidity. We called in anything we found that we thought had any possibility of being important to the mission, giving a description and coordinates to Incident Command. A deputy came out to inspect and collect some of the items we located.

At the end of day four of the search, Syler was still missing. And he's still missing today, the end of day seven.

While this search was going on, members of our team were also helping in neighborhoods east of Flagstaff impacted by flash flooding. These floods are the result of charred soil on the peaks from the huge Schultz wildfire earlier this summer, unable to absorb all of the monsoon rain. That fire was started by an abandoned campfire and burned more than 15,000 acres. The resulting floods have caused extensive property damage to area residents and one death, when a 12-year-old girl was swept away.

On Thursday and Friday, I responded to more calls for SAR assistance in the flood areas, but my contribution (going door-to-door passing out flood advisory information) was minimal compared to the days of neighbors helping neighbors and other Flagstaff residents volunteering to fill and stack sandbags, shovel mud, and anything else they can do help those in need, including some whose homes appear to be a complete loss.

Related article: Rain Outlook Bad For Schultz Flood Area

Nepal Update: Back to Kathmandu

It was time to return to Kathmandu before heading back to the US and my home in Flagstaff. I was very ready to go.

But the planes from Pokhara to Kathmandu weren't flying, grounded by heavy rain and low cloud cover, making it dangerous to fly over the mountains. So onto plan B; I hired a driver. I could have taken a tourist bus for less money, but I opted for the more comfortable, faster car.

But it makes no difference what kind of vehicle you're in when the one narrow road to Kathmandu is blocked by a landslide. Things had been going along smoothly and surprisingly quick until everything suddenly came to a stop.

My driver, who spoke little English, and I and hundreds—maybe thousands—of our closest friends sat, stood, paced, and sweated on the road for hours. (Stupid me, Miss Preparedness, neglected to bring any food, but thankfully I'd remembered bottled water.) We finally moved. A few feet. And then we sat, stood, paced, and sweated for more long hours. At one point, mud started to slide not far behind where our car was stuck in the long line of vehicles, but luckily that slide didn't turn into anything major.

I started to wonder if we might spend the night, even days, stranded on that road. But just when I thought I might lose my marbles in the midst of all those laid-back Nepalis who didn't seem to care about our predicament, things began to move. We crept along for a couple of hours until we passed the major slide, the road still covered with a foot of mud, and then picked up speed, passing trucks and buses on sharp curves just in the nick of time, time and time again.

About 12 hours after I'd left Pokhara, I made it back to Kathmandu in one piece and famished. After dumping my stuff at the hotel at Boudha Stupa, I made a beeline for Saturday's Cafe. It felt good to be on my own—anonymous—for a change. I was ready for some quiet time in the crazy city, just me, myself, and I, and a lot of people-watching as I began to process all that happened in the past two and a half months.

Nepal is a fascinating place filled with fascinating people and cultures, and I've had an amazing experience, but I'm more than ready to be home with friends and my own search and rescue teammates. It will take a while to organize all of my notes, recorded interviews, thoughts, and experiences and begin to write what turned out to be much more of story than I'd anticipated when I first left on this trip.