LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A search effort was under way Thursday night in the Cow Mountain area, where officials were attempting to locate a lost man.
Lake County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue teams, along with K-Corps and CalStar 4, were working into the early morning hours attempting to find the man, according to radio reports.
Based on latitude and longitude coordinates CalStar gave, it located the man in an area near the Whitethorn trail off of Trail No. 15 in the wilderness area, on an eastern facing slope one ridge over from the Cow Mountain repeater site, according to radio reports.
The area was estimated to be about two miles by ground from the Mendocino County side of the wilderness area, based on reports from the scene.
However, CalStar’s pilot said there was no place to land safely due to vegetation and terrain, so he gave latitude and longitude coordinates to help the teams locate the man.
With CalStar 4 running low on fuel, it had to leave shortly after 10:30 p.m.
Shortly after 11:30 p.m., the missing man – who was calling 911 on a cell phone with a low battery – reportedly told a dispatcher that he was shaking, couldn’t stand and was out of water after drinking the one bottle of water he had with him some time before.
Search teams were moving into the area on foot and four-wheel motorcycles early Friday morning.
Additional details about the search and the missing man were not immediately available.
The Merced County Sheriff's Department is searching for a missing 14-year-old girl. Sarah Wade disappeared from her family's Livingston ranch around 8:30 Wednesday night. Search and rescue teams worked all night into Thursday morning to try and find the teen. Her family says it would be extremely out of character for her to run away.
Investigators look for clues in Wade's disappearance. Her family last saw her when she went outside to turn off the horses' water.
"She took her family dog with her. The dog returned but nobody has seen her since," said Tom MacKenzie of the Merced County Sheriff's Department. Family says Sarah is home-schooled, doesn't have a cell phone and doesn't have many friends. "She very rarely ventures off the ranch behind us and she's unfamiliar with the surrounding area," said MacKenzie.
She does, however, have a computer and a Facebook page. Forensic investigators are digging into what she's been doing online. Meanwhile, search and rescue crews scoured the area overnight and Thursday morning. Neighbors heard helicopters overhead.
"It always makes you feel uneasy because you don't know what's happened," said Paula Cunningham, who lives behind the Wades.
A Bloodhound lost Sarah's scent on the road just outside her family's property.
"Just walked along the fence line, worked my way up, got to the road and that's where he stopped and looked at me. Basically that's where the track was done," said Doug Aue, a dog-handler
Later in the afternoon, another search dog had similar luck. As a precaution, investigators searched a nearby home, but found nothing. They also searched the home of a registered sex offender who lives about a mile away. In this rural area, neighbors say they're doing their part to try and find Sarah.
"We're going home to look around our place and see if we see anything," said Cunningham.
Investigators are also going to the homes of Sarah's friends. If you have any information, call 209-385-7444.
By John Roberts (video at source) Hat tips: Bryan Hawkins, Ernie Coffman and Brian O'Connor
The Global Positioning System guides our ships at sea. It’s the centerpiece of the new next-gen air traffic control system. It even timestamps the millions of financial transactions made across the world each and every day.
And it's at extreme risk from criminals, terrorist organizations and rogue states -- and even someone with a rudimentary GPS jammer that can be bought on the Internet for 50 bucks, said Todd Humphreys, an expert on GPS with the University of Texas.
“If you’re a rogue nation, or a terrorist network and you’d like to cause some large scale damage -- perhaps not an explosion but more an economic attack against the United States -- this is the kind of area that you might see as a soft spot,” he told Fox News.
Humphreys was the keynote speaker at a conference of world experts organized by the UK - ICT Knowledge Transfer Network in London yesterday. His predictions for what lies ahead with this emerging threat were dire.
For example, in 2010, UK researchers aimed a low-level GPS jammer at test ships in the English channel. The results were stunning: Ships that veered off course without the crew’s knowledge. False information passed to other ships about their positions, increasing the likelihood of a collision. The communications systems stopped working, meaning the crew couldn’t contact the Coast Guard. And the emergency service system -- used to guide rescuers -- completely failed.
Then, there’s the incident with the U.S. drone lost over Iran. Humphreys believes that by using simple jamming technology, Iranian authorities confused the ultra-sophisticated RQ-170 spy drone to the point that it went into landing mode. The drone’s Achilles heel? It had a civilian GPS system -- not a military-grade encrypted model. It didn’t take much to blind it and force it down.
Another level of rapidly-emerging threat is so-called “spoofing." Unlike a jammer, which blocks or scrambles GPS signals, a “spoofer” mimics information coming from a satellite. It can make an aircraft, ship or other GPS-guided device think it’s somewhere that it’s not.
Humphreys says organized crime is already attempting to exploit the possibilities. Gangs could hijack a container truck full of high value goods, and through spoofing, make its owner think it’s on its way to the intended delivery point -- instead of to the gang’s warehouse.
“The civil GPS signal's completely open and vulnerable to a spoofing attack, because they have no authentication and no encryption," Humpheys told Fox News. "It’s almost trivial to mimic those signals to imitate them and fool a GPS receiver into tracking your signals instead of the authentic ones.”
Hijacking a cargo container is one thing. Spoofing the global financial system is quite another. In his London presentation, Humphreys warned about another emerging GPS threat -- the worldwide network of stock and commodity trades.
Every trade is time-stamped using GPS clocks. Computer programs monitor those time stamps down to the millisecond. If something seems amiss, many programs are designed to pull out of the market. Humphreys says a hacker could fairly easily interfere with those time stamps, triggering trading programs, creating a sudden liquidity crisis and potentially a mini market crash.
Then, there’s the high-dollar reward of manipulating time. An unscrupulous trader -- or criminal organization could make millions by delaying time even by a heartbeat.
“You’re able to match the prices between the networks in a way that’s different from everyone else in the world,” Humphreys said. “Everyone else in the world might be 20 milliseconds off and you happen to know the actual timing. And so you’re able to buy low in one market and sell high in another market.”
The system is so vulnerable to attack because signals coming from the network of GPS satellites orbiting the earth are very weak. They’re about 12,000 miles away. It doesn’t take much to disrupt them.
A landmark study in the UK published Wednesday, Feb. 22, found GPS jammers in widespread use on that nation’s highways. While it has not yet been studied in the U.S., it’s believed an equal or greater problem exists in America.
The devices are illegal in the States, yet they are readily available over the Internet for as little as $50. People use them to avoid tolls, evade a snooping spouse, or use a company vehicle for something other than its intended purpose. And that sometimes has unintended consequences.
Recently, the new GPS landing system at Newark airport, just outside New York City, was crashing several times a week, forcing airliners to switch to a backup system. Airport officials were baffled. It turns out some fellow was moonlighting in a GPS-tracked company van. He was using a jammer to obscure his movements. Every time he drove by Newark airport, he took down the landing system.
As much as GPS jammers or spoofers can cause havoc to multiple systems, Humphreys sees a conflict between the growing integration of GPS technology and our personal lives.
He says devices that interfere with GPS might actually have a legitimate use: Protecting a person’s privacy.
“People have a right to be private in their lives,” he said. “But with GPS tracking devices the size of a small dot being able to place them surreptitiously on your friends -- they’re going to want to resort to some sort of jamming or spoofing as a defense against that kind of invasion of privacy.”
RIVERTON, Wyo. (AP) — Fremont County Search and Rescue found a man unharmed in a remote area of the county after he walked about eight miles in blowing and drifting snow.
The Fremont County Sheriff's Office says the man was driving from Casper to the Riverton area early Monday morning using a navigational device.
Following the device's instructions, the man turned down Gas Hills Road off Wyoming Highway 20/26 and his vehicle got stuck in a snow drift. The road isn't plowed during winter.
After trying to dig the car out, he started walking and came upon an outbuilding for an energy company that had a heater, an Internet phone system and the coordinates of the site.
The Casper Star-Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/yyy89t) that the man called for help and gave the coordinate location.
A fisherman battled churning seas as he swam 700 metres to shore to call rescuers to his stricken boat off South Taranaki.
Jason Rankin, 30, was being hailed as a hero by his fishing companions after the motor of their dinghy failed on Wednesday night.
Francis Katene, 30, and Dakota Janoway, 17, remained on the boat and continued fishing before they were rescued by the South Taranaki Coastguard around midnight.
But the trio copped a serve from police who attended the incident.
Senior Sergeant Blair Burnett, of Hawera, said the lack of safety precautions taken by the men was irresponsible.
"When there's a motor there's potential for a problem, by not having the safety gear you put police and search and rescue workers at risk.
"We could have been dealing with multiple fatalities which would have tied up resources for weeks," he said.
The trio launched the dinghy from Pihama at around 5pm to go diving and were going to catch some snapper when they had motor trouble.
"We were cruising along and the boat just didn't go and then it wouldn't start again. We tried paddling with the oars and throwing the anchor out and pulling ourselves along but we weren't getting anywhere. There was a really strong current," Mr Rankin said.
About 7pm Mr Rankin decided to swim in to get help.
He had a wetsuit, buoyancy control device and flippers.
"I wouldn't have got anywhere without them. It was about 700-800 metres because I had to angle off to the point but it felt like 10 kilometres. I swam on my back for a while to get my bearings and just powered through it."
Mr Rankin said he's not a strong swimmer, but being fit helped.
"Farming keeps you fit. Me and Hoods play for the Hawera Hawks, that's why we're so fit," he said.
He said he could hardly stand when he reached shore, but staggered to his truck and drove to a neighbouring property and called emergency services.
The rescue turned into a community effort with the coastguard and surf lifesaving crews, the Cape Egmont Rescue Trust, Opunake police, police search and rescue teams and a number of local people who wanted to help – one even brought sausages.
Senior Constable Jeff McGrath, the search and rescue incident controller, said the men were lucky to have been rescued.
"They had no light, no EPIRB, no marine radio, no cellphone, no communication gear of any kind and no other means of powering a boat," he said.
A Siskiyou County search team rescued a stranded Humboldt County pair in the wilderness just past the Modoc County border on Monday, the sheriff's office reported.
Around 1 a.m., a woman called the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office saying her husband, David Martin, 46, of McKinleyville was stranded in the snow with his friend, said Allison Giannini, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office.
Martin was with his friend, Georgie Short, 65, of Carlotta, Giannini said.
Martin's wife told deputies her husband called her after walking 9 miles to get cell phone service, Giannini said.
The county's Search and Rescue Team used cell phone-tracking technology to determine Short and Martin were somewhere in the eastern are of southern Oregon or Northern California, Giannini said.
They saw snowmobile tracks in the area and, using their own snowmobiles, searchers found the pair around 8 p.m. They were about six miles south of Doorknob Snowmobile Park on Forest Service Road 49, Giannini said.
Both were unharmed and stayed In Tulelake for the night, Giannini said.
California/Oregon and Klamath County Search and Rescue teams, the United States Forest Service and rangers with Lava Beds National Park helped find Martin and Short, Giannini said.
Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey said people traveling in the area this time of year should tell someone when they plan to return, avoid snowy, isolated areas they don't know well, carry emergency supplies, extra clothes and food, and make sure their cars are in good condition.
A Turlock church is helping mount a search effort for a parishioner who went missing on a solo camping trip. Chris Dellis, 32, of Modesto was last seen in La Grange shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday. Dellis was headed to the Coulterville area for an overnight camping trip. He was expected home Sunday morning, but has not been seen or heard from since.
Dellis and his wife Veronnica are members of the Northside Assembly of God Church in Turlock. On Tuesday about 10 to 15 concerned parishioners made their way up to Coulterville to join in the search efforts.
Mariposa County Sheriff's Department Undersheriff Joel Bibby said his department was originally contacted by the Modesto Police Department about Dellis' absence. A search effort was mounted and Tuesday afternoon Dellis' car was spotted along a rugged road known as Old Yosemite Road.
Searchers were making their way to the vehicle, which was in a fairly remote area, Tuesday evening. However, Bibby said there were no indications that Dellis was still in the vehicle. Dellis' family told the sheriff's department that he wasn't very familiar with the terrain and had last been camping about nine years before, Bibby said.
The weather has been overcast the last few days, but no rain or snow has fallen, which is aiding in the search efforts. The overnight temperatures have been in the mid 30s, Bibby said. Dellis' wife Veronnica had been updating her Facebook page regularly Tuesday with updates on the search efforts. "We are still in search of Chris," she wrote earlier Tuesday. "Please pray. I know it sounds easy and maybe not needed. But my God is controlling everything. We need our Chris home."
Detailed analyses of the way the Earth warped along the Japanese coast suggest that shaking from a Cascadia megaquake could be stronger than expected along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, researchers reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“The Cascadia subduction zone can be seen as a mirror image of the Tohoku area,” said John Anderson, of the University of Nevada.
Anderson compiled ground-motion data from the Japan quake and overlaid it on a map of the Pacific Northwest, which has a similar fault – called a subduction zone – lying offshore.
In Japan, the biggest jolts occurred underwater. The seafloor was displaced by 150 feet or more in some places, triggering the massive tsunami. But in the Northwest, it’s the land that will be rocked hardest – because the Pacific coast here lies so close to the subduction zone.
“The ground motions that we have from Tohoku may actually be an indication that there could be much stronger shaking in the coastal areas of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon,” Anderson said.
Cities like Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C., are far enough from the coast that they might dodge the most violent hammering. But all of the urban areas sit on geologic basins that can amplify ground motion like waves in a bathtub.
As authorities scrambled to mount a rescue for a downed Teton County Search and Rescue helicopter Feb. 15, one team member was fighting a leg injury as he pulled his companions free of the wreckage.
Fire/EMS Chief Mike Moyer dragged pilot Ken Johnson and volunteer team member Ray Shriver from the mangled Bell 407 airship, sheriff’s office spokesman Capt. Tripp Wilson and National Transportation Safety Board investigator Mike Huhn said Tuesday.
Shriver died as a result of the crash, which was reported just before 2 p.m. He was declared dead at a staging area later that evening.
A photograph of the wreck revealed that the airship was almost completely upside down and severely crushed.
The crash occurred 6.7 miles south of Togwotee Mountain Lodge while the Search and Rescue trio was en route to a reported fatal snowmobile accident.
“He did a fantastic job,” Wilson said of Moyer. “I can’t commend him enough.”
Moyer and Johnson both used crutches to attend Shriver’s memorial service Tuesday. Moyer wore a brace that extended from his ankle to his thigh.
At the time of the crash, Moyer was seated in the back of the helicopter, Johnson and Shriver in front, according to information from Huhn.
Moyer pulled Shriver out first, then Johnson. Shriver was alive when Moyer got him free, Huhn said.
Earlier that week, Shriver had urged his teammates not to whine about their tasks. As he lay dying, the search and rescue veteran stuck to his own advice.
“I hope I’m not whining too much,” the mortally injured Shriver said, a colleague recounted at Shriver’s service Tuesday.
Shriver died of internal injuries, Teton County Coroner Kiley Campbell said.
The three would-be rescuers left Search and Rescue headquarters by helicopter at 12:24 p.m. for the snowmobile mission, Wilson said. The snowmobile accident was approximately 35 air miles from the headquarters. A typical Bell 407 cruises at 150 mph; in theory, it could reach the site in about 15 minutes.
Rescuers later confirmed that snowmobiler Steven Anderson, of Morris, Minn., died of a broken neck after running into a tree.
The three rescuers flew over a group of snowmobilers apparently from the party in distress and landed to determine the accident site, Wilson said. The snowmobilers agreed to ride to the site while the helicopter followed. The two groups proceeded in that fashion.
MOFFAT COUNTY- Three teenage boys got stuck for a night in Routt National Forest in Moffat County during a snowmobiling trip. They survived through a blizzard and temperatures in the teens, burning what they could, including a snowmobile to stay warm.
Seventeen-year-old Justin McAlexander, 17-year-old Jessie Burke and 13-year-old Mason Burke got stranded on Sunday near Freeman Reservoir, north of Craig. They were supposed to return home by 5 that evening, but their snowmobiles got caught in 2 to 3 feet of snow.
"I called in search and rescue and told them where we were," Justin said. "Then I started digging a pit, which I dug about 6 or 7 feet down. I pulled my friend Jessie in because his foot was frozen and I pulled his little brother into the pit."
Justin says he then collected some firewood and lit a small fire inside the pit. That fire lasted for about five hours, but when that went out the boys sat in the cold for about two hours.
That's when Justin took matches from a survival kit he had with him, and threw a match into the fuel tank of the snowmobile. He said that burned for about two hours.
"That's the only thing that we've got left to burn," Justin said. "It was gasoline and we all know that gasoline catches fire real quick. So I lit a match dropped it in the tank and figured, if anything, that would give them a big enough flame to see us."
Justin has been in Boy Scouts for 10 years. His dad, Bruce, says survival training taught in Boy Scouts kept Justin and his friends alive. Justin had packed a survival kit and had been through wilderness survival training which taught him how to make a snow pit.
Even though he had training, Justin said it didn't take away from the fear of it all.
"We tried to stay calm," Justin said. "There were some times that we figured that they just stopped looking for us, figured we were dead."
Justin was able to send text messages throughout the night to tell search and rescue where they were, although his phone could no longer make calls.
Crews finally reached the three boys at about 8 a.m. Monday, about 15 hours after the search began.
Jessie and Mason were taken to the hospital to be observed from injuries from the extreme cold. They've both since been released and are doing just fine.
Moffat County Sheriff Tim Jantz says everyone who helped in the search for the boys went above and beyond the call of duty. He also says the three boys did the right thing by staying where they were.
"As far as rescuers, we try to tell people to stay put," Jantz said. "If possible, stay with your vehicle, stay in one location so crews can find you."
"I love the blog and check it frequently. It is the best SAR blog I have seen." John Rachor
Your BLOG is th absolute greatest thing on the web....I check it out often. EW
Search
Please Donate: Tax Deductible 501(c)(3)
P.O. Box 814 Grants Pass, OR 97528
Pins and Whistles
Get Pins and Whistles to Support Search and Rescue Buy a great looking pin and wear it to help raise awareness for what search and rescue does. Anyone can wear this pin with no county or sheriff insignia. Whistles save lives when you least expect them to. Get one for everyone you love.
the life and times of billy blaze The blog of a member of JoCoSAR who has had many adventures as a firefighter, SAR member, and just getting through life.
Hiker Hell "This blog is about learning from other people's mistakes, so you don't make the same ones."
Many stories of how people on hikes got into trouble- the kind of trouble that leads to searches or recoveries.
Hope and Allen Publishing Best value you will find for rope and radio books and other small books that are gems from off the beaten path.
Animated Knots by Grog If you have struggled to learn to tie some of the knots you'd like to use, this is the sure-fire solution using step by step demonstrations.
