Calories to Burn

Have you ever received a page for a search or a rescue that you thought was going to be pretty burley? You get your pack together; grab some high calorie food and water jump in the car and head to the trailhead. On the way, you down the high calorie foods and slug as much water as your stomach can hold knowing that you will burn the calories and need the hydration. You arrive at the trailhead with your bladder about to burst, sign-in and jump behind a tree to do some quick business. After a couple of minutes getting your boots on, appropriate gear ready and team assigned you are ready to head up the trail only to hear over the radio that the subject just walked out of his campsite wondering what all the fuss was about.

For the most part this is actually great news. The subject was found quickly and you have averted untold hours in adverse weather conditions searching for someone. The downside is that you’ve consumed all this high calorie food that you were expecting to burn off over the expected search/rescue. Now as you drive home you begin wondering how are you going to burn off these calories.

This was my experience today and with temperatures in the teens and 10 inches of new snow, I decided that I better eat an extra bar since a search today would be pretty strenuous. Fortunately, our subject was found rather quickly given the conditions. I suppose it could have been worse had we spent all day and night searching only to learn that instead of going for the hike the subject told his wife about, he decided to head to the local watering hole.

Oh well, I guess I’ll do a few more reps at the gym tomorrow.

LCAN - Can it be used for SAR?

As a firefighter I was taught to use the acronym LCAN when giving status reports to the incident commander. LCAN stands for Location, Conditions, Air pressure and Needs. In the fire service LCAN can be used from basic team status to mayday scenarios. Here's and example:

IC: Engine 282 from IC
E282: Engine 282, go ahead
IC: Give me LCAN status
E282: E282 is located on the second floor, top of the stairs side B. Conditions, very hot with heavy smoke, Air (given the lowest air pressure on the team) 3000psi, Need ventilation.
IC: Received LCAN sending Ladder 87 to ventilate roof

I tried using LCAN in a SAR environment recently. Turns out it is better if base/IC knows what LCAN stands for, but they quickly the picture. For SAR purposes, I changed the LCAN a bit to stand for: Location, Conditions (team/subject), Altitude, and Needs.

For Location, I gave my GPS coordinates. Conditions could be used for either team condition or condition of subject(s) depending where you are in the search/rescue. Conditions could be current weather conditions and visibility if you are expecting/hoping for a helicopter. Altitude may or may not be necessary depending on regional landscape, but I found it useful for helping to further pinpoint your location. You should probably use the altitude off of a separate unit from the GPS. Finally, Needs, seems pretty straight forward. If you are hiking up a trail and you have no needs, you can report that. If you have located the subject and find they are injured your needs may be a litter, wheel and manpower.

I'm not sure if LCAN can or should be used widely across SAR operations, but I've found that it provides me with prompts I can let base know in my oxygen starved brain when I arrive at the subject.

Soccer Dad Empathizes With Lost Subjects

I recently took my daughter to her Saturday morning soccer game. The weather was a damp 45 degrees Fahrenheit with a very light breeze. We setup our car camping chairs along the sideline and sipped hot coffee from my tumbler. I’ve found that if I sit at the game I’m less likely to be one of those obnoxious parents (you know who you are).

Knowing that I’d be sitting for at least an hour, I decided to layer appropriately which included a light synthetic down jacket under a heavy Gore-Tex jacket. I also had a knit hat and gloves. While I thought this would be a bit overkill, my legs soon became cold because of the breeze. I grabbed my daughter’s rain coat (she wasn’t using it) and put it over my legs to cut the wind. That helped quite a bit, but for most of the game I was pretty cold.

 My personal whimpyness aside, I began to think about the effects of the cold on a lost person especially if he/she wasn’t prepared for the weather. I had the luxury of knowing I’d be sitting for only an hour and the temperature wasn’t desperately cold, perhaps even balmy for some regions.

The key point I learned was just how quickly a person can get cold not moving and just sitting in the elements.  I will keep this in mind on future rescue/search missions for both prepared and unprepared hikers.

Why does it take so long to get the subject's cell phone lat/long?

The short answer: Turns out that law enforcement must send a fax, yes a fax to the cell phone service provider to get permission for the cell company to "ping" the specific cell phone. Ah ha! It is a privacy issue, glad big brother isn't tracking my Costco runs.

But the person already called 911 isn't that enough? Turns out the answer is yes & no. When a person calls 911, location information is sent to the 911 operator along with the person's name and telephone number. Most phones these days have a GPS chip which is activated when a 911 call is placed, but if you own a GPS you know it takes a few minutes to aquire an accurate location. The 911 operator may get the initial tower triangulation location which may or may not be accurate.

If the caller hangs up or is diconnected on the 911 call, the 911 operator calls back as part of proceedure. If they are able to get an answer, then further location infomation may be obtained. If there is no answer, then the operator may assign the call to an officer who then begins the process of getting location information on the phone. Thus the whole fax process.

There is actually some more detail about which cell companies (network technology) can "ping" a phone, but I'll save that for an upcoming article on Backcountry Rescuer.

Full Stomach Mission - ugh!

The other night my unit got paged out for a couple of hikers who were benighted on a popular hike. They had a Lat/Long location off of the cell phone and this was looking like a pretty straight forward, “Snatch & Grab” mission. The cell phone location put them at 3,800 ft. elevation and in thick timber; though they reported they were on a boulder field. The trail starts at 1,000 ft elevation and gains 3,800 ft. to the summit (4,800 ft.) in about 2.5 miles.

There of course were a couple of issues. The weather had gotten worse and it was now raining and cold. The hikers did not have rain gear, or flashlights/headlamps. On the way there I was managed to grab a couple of spare Gore-Tex jackets and two extra balaclavas. I was also thinking that these guys were probably going to be pretty cold with the temperature at 48 degrees and dropping.

I was the first to the trailhead, signed in and began up the trail. With the urgency of hypothermia in my mind I started off at a faster pace than I normally do for this hike. BTW, I hiked up the same trail the day before. Not only did my legs feel heavy from the previous day’s hike, but I had just finished dinner when the pager went off so I had a full stomach. While trying to hustle up the trail, I got to taste supper a couple times and at one point thought I might and actually hoped I would lose it. Everything stayed down and I managed to finally get into a reasonable pace, eventually reaching the stranded couple in a respectable time.

The hikers were about 50 yards off of the trail on a boulder field. Their actual elevation was 4080 ft. about 280 ft higher than the cell location. They were damp and cold so I offered both subjects a jacket and a balaclava but only the female subject accepted. I gave them headlamps, checked their vitals and we were back on the trail hiking down within 15 minutes. I keep thinking this should have been faster.

All in all a pretty straight forward mission, I only wish I had not had that second helping of squash.