Around 1130 on Friday, February 25, Los Alamos Fire Brigade received the callout for Mission #17 less than 5 miles west of Chili, NM (North of Española). The search was for a subject, missing since Sunday, who’s rolled vehicle had been discovered the day before by State Police. Fire Brigade quickly responded with 10 team members (11 if you include the Incident Commander who is a Brigade member in good standing), along with teams from Mountain Canine Corp, Taos SAR, Santa Fe SAR, and Rio Arriba.
Upon arrival at incident base, the location of the subject’s rolled vehicle up an arroyo with 1 stream and 1 rough county road, our radio-whizz was taken from the Brigade to assist with incident base communications while the remaining members were split among three teams. Team 1, containing two skilled trackers, accompanied State Troopers and an area scent-dog along previously discovered tracks left by the subject. Teams 2 & 3 were sent to search down-arroyo, back towards Chili, looking for clues left by the subject in the event he tried to walk back towards town, following either the stream or forest road found in this particular arroyo. In the ensuing hours, several additional clues were found by Teams 1, 2, & 3 ranging all-over the arroyo, mostly boot-prints from a distinct pair of cowboy boots which the subject had been wearing. With darkness closing-in, and the impossibility of finding additional clues, incident command took note of the last set of footprints discovered that day and suspended the search until morning.
The next morning, 6 of the 10 Brigaders from the previous day returned to our search area along with a multitude of other teams from the region, a truly impressive showing of volunteers. However, given new information from the previous day’s search and a greater understanding of the area, incident base was relocated further down-arroyo more towards town and the subject’s suspected direction of travel. Once again our team’s radio-savvy member was pulled to assist with communications at incident base while remaining members were split between two teams: the first to search for additional clues along the road between incident base and the point of the last found clue from the previous night, a set of cowboy boot prints. The second team was to perform a thorough and arduous grid search spanning the arroyo’s mouth, an approximately 1 mile expanse where route and direction of travel of the subject would be less clear if he’d reached that area. The first of these teams worked with a few other field teams to locate and identify a few new boot prints slightly further down-arroyo from the previous night’s last clue, but not much to provide further insight to location. After searching up and down the county road, another member of our first team was taken to assist with Incident Base operations and the remaining two members were sent back into the field to follow-up on clues reported from other field teams both on that day and the previous.
During this time, around 1330, our subject was found up a drainage off the main arroyo about 1/2 mile from incident base and all teams were returned to base. Unfortunately, the subject was found deceased leading to a somber and heartbreaking resolution to the impressive efforts put forth by participating SAR teams, State Troopers, family members and friends. Despite the unfortunate ending to this mission, planning and execution of this mission were done well. Our incident commander, a member of our fire brigade, executed his role and responsibility excellently for his first mission as a commander. But despite our best efforts, sometimes the results still don’t turn out as we hope, for this our hearts go out to the family of the deceased.
Gratefully,
Alex Josephson
