Just before 2200 on the evening of Sunday, October13th, the brigade SAR team leader sent out a request for team members to participate in a search for a missing person in the Rancho de Taos area. The missing individual had not been seen since mid-morning that day and her car was located in the late afternoon, giving the mission an area to concentrate on. Five members of the team responded, four as ground pounders and one as incident commander.
The team arrived at incident base just after midnight (approximate 0005 on October 14th). Ground teams from Taos SAR, Atalaya SAR, Santa Fe SAR, Cibola SAR all arrived similarly as we were all given a midnight report time. A dog team and UAV operator from Taos SAR also arrived and were deployed.
Given the time of year there is always some urgency to a night search due to the possibility of hypothermia. The indicated temperature at incident base at the time of our arrival was 42F. We were briefed by the incident management team (IMT) on the subject’s characteristics, clothing, and other pertinent details. The IMT had already plotted out search sectors on the map by the time we arrived. As numerous friends and family of the subject were already out looking we were assigned a sector not yet covered and requested to perform a line search of the sector. A line search is like it sounds, where the team spreads out in a line with a spacing determined to give a reasonably high probability of detecting a subject who might be on the ground injured or ill. The sector is then covered by the team in a manner similar to mowing grass in a back-and-forth pattern. During the search we periodically call the subject’s name to see if we can establish audio contact with them.
After completing most of our first sector, we were requested to move to an adjacent sector where the IMT thought the likelihood of the subject being might be higher. After nearly completing the second sector we were again asked to do a limited sweep in a third sector, in conjunction with another team. By the time we completed this it was after 0600 and we had covered about 9 miles. While this may not sound like a large distance, much of our search area was heavily overgrown and required a significant amount of effort to move through and around the growth. It is always a challenge to search this type of terrain well, particularly at night when the team has to be cautious of its’ own safety in the many snags and deadfalls
We then returned to incident base to outbrief before heading home around 0700. At that time the subject still had not been located and fresh teams were being called in for a second operation period. In the end the subject was located by friends, safe and sound, mid-morning, along a road well outside of the primary search area. Thus while we did not directly contribute to recovery of the subject, it is always a good day when the subject of a search is able to return home safely.