Stranger Danger

[Skyray]

Brennan Hawkins has been found in the Utah mountains alive and well.  It appears that it took so long to find him because he was actually hiding from searchers.  Since the CAP is in the SAR business, it might be good to look into this issue.  Apparently, his family had a "password" to identify unknown idividuals that were acting on behalf of the family--picking him up from school, et cetera.  It never occurred to the searchers that may be a problem, but it occurred to Brennan, and he hid from strangers.

It is a shame that our country has come to this, but Incident Commanders on lost persons searches should take into account the age of the missing person and inquire if there is a safe word that the victim will need to accept help.

[whatevah]

*ahem*

"here, kiddie, kiddie... I've got some candy for you..."

[Cmdbuddy]

*ahem*

"here, kiddie, kiddie... I've got some candy for you..."

Oh boy, Lt Horn is a child predator now...

In all seriousness, I was thinking about this same issue while watching the news release on his rescue.  As a child, I was always taught a secret "password" that I used with my parents that nobody else knew, but I'd like to think that if I've been out in the woods for several days alone, I would go up to anyone I saw.  But then again, I was never considered a "shy" kid.  Perhaps the parents should have spoke up and told the rescuers about the password just to let him know that they were "good guys."  Unfortunately, kids will always be kids, and I don't think there's a way to fight against this...

[Cadet Bonnett]

Brennan Hawkins has been found in the Utah mountains alive and well.  It appears that it took so long to find him because he was actually hiding from searchers.  Since the CAP is in the SAR business, it might be good to look into this issue.  Apparently, his family had a "password" to identify unknown idividuals that were acting on behalf of the family--picking him up from school, et cetera.  It never occurred to the searchers that may be a problem, but it occurred to Brennan, and he hid from strangers.

It is a shame that our country has come to this, but Incident Commanders on lost persons searches should take into account the age of the missing person and inquire if there is a safe word that the victim will need to accept help.

May I ask, But why didn't CAP  (or The officers) ask his family, if they had a password. If someone goes Missing and CAP is called in they should ask members if there is a passwrod that will lead us to them.

Do you agree?

[Skyray]

May I ask, But why didn't CAP  (or The officers) ask his family, if they had a password. If someone goes Missing and CAP is called in they should ask members if there is a password that will lead us to them.

Do you agree?

Absolutely.  But the problem is that nobody thought of it.  The purpose of this post is so that the Incident Commander will think of it next time.  Another problem is that I don't think CAP was called, the searchers were mostly ad hoc volunteers.  We have awesome ground team capabilities, but somehow we manage to hide that from people so we don't get asked to participate.

[Cadet Bonnett]

May I ask, But why didn't CAP  (or The officers) ask his family, if they had a password. If someone goes Missing and CAP is called in they should ask members if there is a password that will lead us to them.

Do you agree?

Absolutely.  But the problem is that nobody thought of it.  The purpose of this post is so that the Incident Commander will think of it next time.  Another problem is that I don't think CAP was called, the searchers were mostly ad hoc volunteers.  We have awesome ground team capabilities, but somehow we manage to hide that from people so we don't get asked to participate.

Why don't we get asked. We have several member certified for that type of stuff don't we.

[Skyray]

Why don't we get asked. We have several member certified for that type of stuff don't we.

Absolutely.  I have conducted line search and deep woods search training for years.  And we have got a lot of people who are very good at it.

The answer as to why we don't get asked is political.  Probably the biggest reason is that no one who gets put in charge of these things (searches) has any idea that we have any expertise in it.  Somebody goes missing, and likely as not the sheriff gets called.  If he knew that he had fifteen hundred cadets with local terrain search expertise and their own insurance, he would probably jump at the chance to use them.  But we (by we I mean the seniors) haven't done a very good job of telling him.  So he doesn't know, and we keep training for a call that is not going to come.

[Horn229]

Why don't we get asked. We have several member certified for that type of stuff don't we.

Because not very many people know about CAP, and our response time for something like that is terrible. It's much more effective to call the police since they are always there, CAP it will take a good long time to get a ground time or an aircrew. Just this past week there were a number of plane crashes on the east coast, two of which were in New Jersey. On Tuesday my brother (1st Lt Jerry Horn), another cadet, and myself went up to assist in the search, when we signed in at Mission Base, we were the only Ground Team there.

The search had been going on for two days and 3 people from another wing were the only Ground Team that responded? Shortly after we signed in, a Police chopper spotted the downed chopper, and about 45min later, everyone was released to go home. But then, Wednesday an e-mail was sent out asking for GTM's and GTL's over the age of 18 to do site security, again 1st Lt Horn and myself responded, only to find the IC there doing site security. a little while later 3 more seniors from NJWG came out.

Do you understand what I'm saying? For a missing aircraft, a wing couldn't field a ground team, and for site security more than 6 hours after the call, still no one had shown up to help. If we can't get 4+ members to do GT for security, should we really expect to have calls for missing person searches?