February 19th 2022 finds 13 Brigade members and trainees in the mountains practicing winter Search and Rescue skills. As you can see the weather is glorious!
Our SAR Team Leader planned a fantastic mock search scenario. To start, we exercise our callout system with a text message to the team. The text says we have a mission for a female on snowshoes who didn’t return home the previous day. State Police found her car at a trailhead in the Jemez Mountains Sunday morning. Keep in mind this is a training session and the State Police were not actually involved. The text went on to give Incident Base coordinates and meet time and place.
Arriving at Incident Base we learn that Terra Dactyl has been out overnight. Unfortunately there is no information on what she is wearing or how well prepared she is. Incident Command asks us to break into two teams with one team following a snowshoe track in the bottom of the valley and the second team to follow a road overlooking the valley. Two members in training to be team leaders are assigned to each team.
Each team huddles to discusses safety, strategy and what gear to carry for ourselves and the patient. The team leader assigns members to handle communications, navigation and medical. We pack up and hit the trail. When searching, ground pounders look all around them for the subject and clues. Here we investigate an article of clothing spotted under a tree. We also conduct sound sweeps on a regular basis calling the persons name.
After a bit of hiking the team on the road (team 2) above the valley contacts team 1 (in the valley) that they have heard a response from the subject after a sound sweep. Team 1 also hears a response after a sound sweep and starts heading in the direction of the voice. Soon team 2 radios team 1 that they have a visual on the subject and guides team 1 to the subject. Our medical person, a Wilderness First Responder, assess the patient and determines she is moderately hypothermic with no physical injuries but is too exhausted to hike out on her own. Time to break out the Cascade Rescue Litter which we have setup as a sled for winter operations. Our medic treats the subject with dry clothing, food and warm drinks, an insulated pad and wraps the subject in a sleeping bag and emergency blanket.
When dealing with a hypothermic patient that is not able to hike out themselves or is severely hypothermic, we place the patient into a hypothermia wrap. The patient is sandwiched between sleeping bags and placed on an insulated sleeping pad and tarp in the sled. The tarp is then wrapped around the patient and the whole package is strapped into the sled. The video here shows the team moving the sled. Even though the sled has runners to help it from sliding sideways on slopes we needed tenders on the side to help keep the sled on track.
Arriving back at incident base the subject is transferred to EMS (Emergency Medical System) and we head off to debrief, sign out and head home. In summary, we practiced callout, response, incident base operation, preparation for a specific mission, navigation including moving to specific points based on cell phone pings, communications including changing frequencies in the field, snowshoeing, search techniques, probability of detection, patient treatment and packaging, and evacuating an injured subject. Whew! Everyone learned or re-learned something. Many thanks to our SAR Team Leader for organizing the mock search, our patient and all those that came out.