Search and rescue stories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Inspired by the coworkers leaving the guy behind thread. What rescues have you been involved in, from either side?

Me: Kid spiral fractured his femur jumping his snowmobile–had to carry him to the helicopter at -10F in the evening. We all got a little frostbite on the way out.

A woman stepped off the trail above our previous house to pee. Got disorientated and went downhill from the (20’ away) trail instead of uphill. A storm moved in. Her friends were frantic trying to find her (this was at 11,000’ in the Rockies). She ended up at a neighbor’s house and they offered to take her up to the trailhead, but she wanted to go back to her condo. Her friends came to our house and when they found out she didn’t try to contact them they were not amused. All involved were in their fifties.

A buddy and I were out on snow bikes (motocross bikes with a ski and track). Snow bikes do amazingly well on steep sidehills. Tommy was going under a small cornice when a snowmobiler jumped of it and landed on him. Separated his shoulder, broke his scapula, and punctured a lung. Luckily it was sunny and relatively warm. He’s had opioid issues, but we got him on the helicopter and ketamine and they got him to the hospital. For him exercise is what drives the demons away, so 2 weeks later he was having his wife put his ski boots on at home and going skiing in a sling. Quote from the surgeon: “You’re a bad patient!”

Yours?

2

Once at a going away party for a teacher friend of ours, 3 kids got into a swollen mountain river. Linked arms and started walking down stream.

This was a very bad idea.

None of the teachers where paying any attention to the kids. There was an eddy in the river for the kids to play, but if you get out of the eddy, your dealing with swift deep water.

I saw the kids walking down the river, about thigh deep at that point, and ran to get ahead of them. The river channel ahead of them became narrower. So deeper faster current.

I jumped into the river holding onto a willow tree branch so as not to get washed away. I yelled and yelled at them to turn back, and they did.

Getting myself out, I slipped and fell on the bank. Right on my chin. You know those cartoons where the character gets hit and sees ‘stars’. It happens.

I was in search and rescue. Colorado Ground Search and Rescue decades ago. We where an arm of the Civil Air Patrol, so we where the group to look for and bring out survivors of small plane crashes. I was only with the group for about 3 years. Never found a survivor, or a victim for that mater.

The training was fun though. We did a lot of rope work. Evacuation of a person using a basket on a vertical descent. Cable insertions from a Chinook helicopter (that was quite the ride). Tyrolean systems for river crossings.

I still put my knowledge of rope work to use.

3

I once attended a summer camp where you had to hang up your ID badge at the lifeguard station every time you went swimming in the lake. At the start of the summer, the head lifeguard reminded us to always, ALWAYS take your badge with you when you left. If the badge was still there and you couldn’t be located, the staff would assume you were still somewhere in the water and initiate a “Lost Swimmer Procedure” - linking arms in a long chain and slowly combing through the lake for your (presumably waterlogged) body.

A few weeks later, someone noticed that the head lifeguard’s badge was still hanging at the lifeguard station, but there was no sign of him anywhere. The staff spent a frantic twenty minutes searching the lake until he was found on the other side of camp sipping a coffee, having forgotten to take his badge when he finished swimming.

He did not return the following summer.

4

I was a member of search and rescue group for a few years. I was a “ground pounder” as opposed to ATV or horse crew. Lots of great training, but only a couple searches in the few years I was with them. One was a search for a lost snowmobiler that was located at a small town bar. My most significant rescue was when I was heading into a mountain range early in the season for some peak bagging while there was still snow. We had crampons, ice axe, and rope. Another group that went in before us did not have the appropriate gear and a person fell down a snow gully and dislocated his arm to arrest his fall. They spent the night in a precarious location. We went in and got ropes across the gully so the group could get back out while waiting for the actual search and rescue crew. The true S&R that showed up didn’t have a harness and hadn’t been trained in how to make one out of rope so I helped with that to get the injured hiker across the gully. The S&R team that showed up had EMTs so they knew how to brace his arm (it was fully out) with a hiking pole and they were able to get him up to the ridge above where a helicopter came and got him. We gathered our ropes and continued on and had a great trip.

I left S&R when it was infiltrated by a few “militarized” folks. I had enough of their regimented ICS all-the-time training to last a lifetime and bailed.

5

Didn’t miners have a similar system. They had a copper badge or medallion, thus the term ‘Cop Out’ was born.

6

The story that I thought of when I read the “coworker left behind” story is an ambulance call I responded to five or six years back.

A woman called in a health and welfare check on her husband, from whom she was separated. the man had been supposed to pick her kids up on Friday evening, and when she had still not heard from him on Sunday evening, she asked the police to check on him.

He had been lying on the floor of his bedroom for two days. He had had a stroke on Friday. It is critical to get stroke patients to a hospital within 3 hours of the stroke occurring, to minimize permanent brain damage. I just remember all of us treating him with extreme urgency, and acting professional as we were talking to him. But we were all shooting each other looks of horror as we rushed him to the hospital.

7

Former EMS:

Once went with police to a welfare check and found an older woman on the floor with a broken hip. She’d been unable to move for days, and this was pre-cellphone so no way of reaching help. She was remarkably cheerful despite her ordeal, even cracking jokes with us (between yelps of pain as we moved her).

Personal mishaps:

I and a friend (11-12 years old) got lost hiking on a church camping trip. We were gone for about 6 hours, but managed to find our way back to a frantic group of leaders. They had no procedures in place to insure headcounts, and no idea what to do when we went “missing”. They hadn’t alerted any authorities at all. They had however, prayed a lot, and congratulated themselves for getting God involved and saving us.

As an adult, I once went pretty far afield on a hunting trip and found myself completely confused in the woods. I was on a 4-wheeler with a mostly full tank, had a compass and water and even a decent coat so I wasn’t in serious danger. But it took around 9 hours to finally work my way back to civilization. I found evidence of logging and followed it to a path, then to a larger dirt path, then a ramshackle cabin with smoke coming from a chimney, then a mile further found electric lines and followed them to larger and larger wires, then finally an actual road with tracks and followed it to a lone house trailer. There was a woman sitting on the porch smoking, and she directed me back to the tiny town nearest our lease. Note that the cabin I mentioned was past the last electric lines, and the occupants apparently lived without power. I kept hearing banjo music in my head, so decided not to ask for help there.

8

You know those images you always see on TV of first responders pulling people out of flooded cars or even using boats to evacuate them from their flooded homes? Been there, done that.
We had one guy, water was chest deep for me who rescued a bag of coffee. Ummm, you have no way to turn those beans into a hot cup, nor do you have a cup. He also put some clothes in a small duffel bag but came outside nude & put clothes on immediately upon getting in our boat because he was afraid the PD would arrest him for indecent exposure.
Had a young couple who had just moved into their house (like 2 weeks earlier), no flood insurance. It was a couple of steps up from the street into the house & the living room was already over knee height…& that was well before the river crested. She was sobbing & I felt bad for her.

I’ve also been involved in some search & recoveries. Sadly, most dive calls are recoveries instead of rescues.

9

Do you have a cite for that? The Oxford English Dictionary says “cop out” is derived from the verb “cop” meaning to capture or to steal.

10

Friend crashed his motorcycle up the nastiest, rockiest Canyon around. Broke his leg good! He waved off Heli-flight (got screwed financially the last time that happened, but that’s another story…)…

Calls me up. Askes me to come get him, but I have to pick up the Paramedics at the bottom of the hill first… That was fun…

What a Cluster-Fuck. 73 Jeep Commando, two fire-fightin’ guys going up a road that goats would avoid. I don’t really remember how we convinced them to climb aboard.

Short version: I got him out of there, but wrecked the fuck out of my Jeep. Never even got a goddamn “Thank you”.

Next day, he wants me to hike up there and ride his bike out… Goddammit.

11

I’ve got another one, but its as equally unbelievable.

12

Okay. I’m diving in…

Back in High School, buddy shows up at my house and asks me to go camping … up on Genoa Peak. He’s gonna drive his '68 Mustang up there. Back then, the road was somewhat passable, but really sketchy for that car.

I was a Weather Nut back then. I said, “Dude, it’s gonna snow tonight.” Well, it sure as hell did…

He shows up around 2pm the next afternoon, after it had snowed a good 2 feet in the mountains. Told me an Epic story of his hike out and ride from two Indian fellas who didn’t know how to drive too well (another story entirely).

He wants me to help rescue his Mustang. Now, we were both High School kids. Didn’t have no fancy Jeeps or anything. My neighbor had a K5 Blazer and I got conned into asking him to help us. Well, he didn’t wanna go, so he lets me take the rig…

Plowing thru feets of snow, end up hauling the Mustang back, idiot friend hooked the tow chain to his radiator, destroying that…

Tore off the stabilizer link on the Blazer… Ken was cool about it. I made it up to him later…

Crazy Ass Kid Stuff!

13

Mostly-retired paramedic here. Wilderness S.A.R. was what got me into EMS in the first place, so I have too many stories to count.

One of my favorites, though, was when I was a passerby, rather than a responder (at first).

Saturday afternoon. First date with a woman I met via the Personals. She agreed to cross country skiing in a very popular trail area. Lots of people, so nothing isolated or scary (at first). We got maybe a mile back along the trail, passing and being passed, hearing lots of kids yelling, etc.

Suddenly I’m thinking one faint set of yells doesn’t sound like kids having fun. Distant and very hard to hear over the wind. I don’t think she quite believed it, but she humored me, going off trail, floundering in deep snow till the the yells were louder. Sure enough the words were, “help! help!”

Lots more floundering brought us to where a middle aged woman “and I always take my calcium supplements, why would my leg just snap like that?” was lying in the snow, unable to get up. Her only companion: a dog who wouldn’t leave her side.

This was before cell phones, but the spot has no reception even today. So I gave my car keys to my date, asked her to ski back to the parking lot, telling anyone she meets about the situation, and come back with my emergency sleeping bag.

A couple more bystanders arrived and helped us get the bag and our jackets under the woman. She told us she’d been yelling her head off for a long time and was starting to wonder if she’d be found before night.

Park Rangers came with a rescue sled, and the whole lot of us (to say nothing of the dog) made it to the parking lot. Where the ambulance crew had no EMTs advanced enough to give pain meds, so can I please go along.

“Hey, woman I’ve just met for the first time today, you’ve still got my keys. Can you drive a standard transmission? Great ! Can you drive to the hospital and meet me there? About 45 minutes.”

Can’t figure out why I didn’t get a second date.

14

I guess this is a rescue. Mostly stupid teenagers. My friend and I did a lot of jeeping. Well with pick up trucks. Short bed Chevys.

Late one night we decided that this would be a great thing to do. Friend got stuck driving up a steep wet trail. He got out to check it out. I was behind him in my truck.

Friend did not put his truck in park. I think he may have put it in reverse. He stepped out and slipped under the truck. The left front tire rolled over his chest.

Hospital ensued. Had to ‘jeep’ him out to the hospital. Broken ribs and a messed up spleen.

Not really search and rescue. Mostly dumb kids (I was one of them).

15

Not me, but my niece. She and a group took a raft trip on a mildly challenging river. She and her hubby are competitive swimmers, and one of their buddies is experienced at underwater rescue. After the trip, near the campsite, a little kid came up to them and asked if they had seen his 13 yr old sister. Their parents - drinking beer at the campsite, had put the 2 of them in the water upstream on inflatable rafts - lie on, not sit in - wearing flip flops and no life jackets.

The experienced guy organized a challenging search in a pretty stiff current, which ended when my nearly exhausted niece felt a foot. The kid was wedged under a rock underwater. Niece had a rough time for quite a while after.

Fucking parents put up a go-fund-me, and in the news coverage I never saw a hint of negligence on their part. Oh yeah, the news also said the sheriff’s office personnel - who were sitting in their cars, conducted the search.

Apologies for posting someone else’s experience rather than my own.

16

Jesus. That’s horrible and the parents are worse. In my experience in Telluride SAR members often needed therapy/PTSD treatment. The worst was a couple that went off of Black Bear Pass and the wife became entangled in the Jeep as it tumbled 1200’+ vertical down a 40 degree mountainside. Bits and pieces, to put it bluntly.

Also in Telluride, a newly married couple on their honeymoon decided to do a day of heli-skiing to celebrate. She fell face first into a 8" deep stream and her helmet wedged between 2 rocks and she drowned before help could get to her.

Not my stories but I knew people involved in both.

17

Hey, I was promised search and rescue. :sob:

18

Not the right person for you. I would have been even more attracted to you!

19

Was gonna say, I thought that would end with “Our Xth anniversary is coming up.”

20

Thank you, Zyada. It is my great misfortune, then, that I wasn’t skiing with you that day. People who think that sort of thing is cool are kind of rare, in my experience.

You’d probably have liked the patient too. I asked all the usual questions that target level of orientation, including, “Do you know who the President is?” Her answer to that was, “yes I do, goddammit !” (A different Republican president who now seems pretty good by comparison.)