[pct-l] Be Careful out there. Don't let this be you

[Andrea Dinsmore]

If the HRT team had to look for her for 90 minutes they didn't have
coordinates from a PLB to find her. Here is the complete story from SAR and
HRT teams.

On Thursday afternoon we flew down to King County to assist with the search
of a hiker who had been missing for three days. We received our assignment
at Bandera Airfield and spent the next 90 minutes flying low over the
forest canopy and various alpine lakes in hopes of spotting the missing
hiker and her dogs. The plan was to keep searching until we ran low on fuel
and then return to our headquarters. After hitting our fuel mark, we flew
our last assignment north down the Pratt River on the way back to
Snohomish. It was on this final portion of the search that one of our crew
members spotted the missing hiker waving from a log alongside the river
bank. We quickly inserted two crew members and departed to refuel. Once
back on scene, we hoist extracted the hiker and both of her dogs. Members
of King County Explorer Search and Rescue arrived on scene to help us with
the extraction and worked on putting out the signal fires set by the hiker.
Over 16 ground teams were in the field on that day alone. We are proud of
our working relationship with neighboring counties-- it allows for our
organizations to integrate seamlessly when additional resources are needed.

It doesn't matter if you are lost or hurt. If you are out of food and not
dressed for the weather a day hike that turns into a longer trip than
planned it can turn deadly. She had the brains to start a signal fire to
help with her rescue. If my child was 3 days late from a day hike I would
definitely be calling SAR.

Andrea Dinsmore

On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 4:20 PM, Brick Robbins <brick at brickrobbins.com>
wrote:

> http://vimeo.com/108635731
>
> Of course, call if you really need rescue, but a little bit of care
> goes a long way....
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