Around midnight on September 27 the Fire Brigade received calls to search for a lost camper among the piñon forests and oil fields surrounding the Navajo reservoir. While not exactly close the incident’s location, Fire Brigade was among the first teams able to respond with two brigade members on the road by 1:00 am to start the 4 1/2 hour drive. Unfortunately, the location of incident base had not been effectively established or communicated before our team arrived on-site and the initial hour and a half was spent chasing a mixed set of coordinates and communications, but when our team arrived at the base around 6:30 am we were still the only team to have arrived. At this point, an additional brigade member became available and at the request of the incident commander also began the long drive out to assist.
Incident base was located at the missing subject’s (a 70 year old male in excellent physical condition) original campsite at the northern edge of a thick, albeit narrow piñon forest and surrounded by oil rigs. Our first assignment was to drive around to the south side of the piñon forest, about a mile from the camp’s location as the crow flies, and begin checking oil well sites looking for shack’s, wellhouses, or other structures in which the subject might have spent the night. In addition, we were to inspect the southern edge of the forest for any additional clues. After checking a few oil sites which we had spotted from satellite imagery, with permission from the incident commander, we took a short detour hike through the rain part-way into the piñon forest to investigate a solitary structure we’d seen from the oil rigs. Along that hike, we encountered a series of distinct footprints which we proceeded to follow for a half mile but ultimately was not our subject and led back to an oil rig we’d previously cleared.
While finishing up the tracking, a call from incident base requesting our team to assist in directing other arriving teams to incident base and it was while carrying out this new assignment that we received calls over the radio to stand down and return to base. Our subject had indeed spent the night in an oil-well shack, but one we had yet to get to, and when the morning light came managed to flag down a pair of hunters who helped located and transport him back to his campsite, around 8:30 am. Fortunately, other than an uncomfortable and cold night, the subject suffered no harm and all was well.