Every quarter the Brigade holds a large training session, or mock search, where we attempt to duplicate the conditions of a real mission. Quarterly gives us the opportunity to practice in all four seasons. For our summer training the callout text came in at 19:09 September 30th 2023 requesting members to report to Incident Base (IB) at 08:00 the next morning. Incident Base was located at the “old poor man’s shooting range” a bit further down Rendija Canyon from the current Sportsmen’s Club.
Arriving at IB we learn that a hiker had called in saying they had an injured ankle and could not walk far. Because the subject called themselves, we also had coordinates for their location. However, there was a couple of wrinkles. The subject said they were moving to a location with shelter and would call back so we could get new coordinates. The subject never called back, and the Incident Commander could not reach the subject. Therefore, the subject was probably not still where we thought they were. Second, a massive solar flare had temporarily knocked out the GPS system, so our fancy navigation devices were useless. Good thing we always take paper maps and compasses with us.
With one of our team volunteering to navigate, another volunteering to handle communications the rest of us strapped pieces of the litter onto our packs and we headed out on a lovely day. Careful navigation brought us to the last known location of our subject who, as we expected, was not there. Earlier, our team had split up to follow another trail that had promising footprints. However, nothing of interest was found along the way. Sound sweeps, where we yell the subjects name, yielded nothing. Was our subject asleep? Unconscious? Regardless, we needed to employ another search technique – a careful line search. During a line search the members of the team line up and move perpendicular to the line spaced such that team members can see the ground between each other. We then move in sync to cover the area. We soon found our subject hunkered down in a grove of trees. While our medical team took over and our communication person called into IB to let them know we had found the subject, where the subject was located and their condition the rest of the team started assembling our litter.
After loading our subject into the litter and securing them we head off to IB. Given this was a training we switched subjects so everyone had a chance to be on the different positions of the litter to see what was involved in managing the litter. All-in-all a great session!
