Nelson District SAR personnel have recently been involved in a number of underground rescues. Here are some of the details of a recent SAR operation

Blizzard Pot entrance is located a short distance down the eastern slopes of Mt Arthur Ridge at 1150m asl, it connects via a series of vertical shafts to the Nettlebed Cave system. Nettlebed is a complex system of about 25 km’s in length and has an entrance in the Pearse Valley at 301m asl.

The through trip Blizzard/Nettlebed is usually accomplished using a single rope, the rope is pulled down behind the party after each pitch is descended. It is customary for parties to break their trip at Salvation Hall where there are sleeping bags. Route finding can be quite difficult.

The Situation

A group of six visiting Australian cavers planned a pull through trip of Blizzard Pot/Nettlebed entering Blizzard on the morning of Wednesday January 3 with the intention of exiting Nettlebed the following morning.

An associated group of cavers planned to enter Nettlebed via the main entrance, this group intended doing a "Tiki Tour" of the lower better known parts of the cave and to either meet up with the Blizzard party or to mark the exit route. Neither intention was carried through as they failed to find the entrance.

At 11.00 hours Thursday morning the authorities were notified, by the Nettlebed group, that the Blizzard party was overdue. This group were given further instructions on how to locate Nettlebed entrance and arrangements were made to set up communications from the entrance.

Opinion among the Nelson cavers, familiar with the cave, was that the party was likely to have been held up for one of the following reasons:-

A They entered the wrong cave

B The pull rope was hung up

C Slow trip because of difficult route finding

D Totally lost

E Injury

Options B, C and D were felt to be the most likely.

It was decided that a Class II operation would be mounted should the missing people not show up by 0700 hours Friday morning

Operation begins at 0700 hours at the Motueka Police Station. Settled fine weather with no change forecast.

Police		3
NZLSAR		5
Air Force		5
Cavers		16

Motueka Aero club rooms set up as a transport base

Iroquois starts ferrying personnel at 0800 hours to Nettledbed entrance, the nature of the terrain requires the use of the winch for the majority of placements.

Team 1 - Blizzard Pot: 2 NZLSAR, 4 Cavers.

NZLSAR to set up comms. at entrance, cavers to rig cave and run Michie phone wire. Keep going to Salvation Hall or missing party found.

Team 2 - Nettlebed: 5 cavers.

To proceed into cave carrying emergency gear until missing party located or meets up with Team 1

Team 3 - Nettlebed: 2 NZLSAR, 5 cavers.

To set up comms. at entrance, and run Michie phone wire into cave.

At 1230 hours Team 2 reported finding a note at a point called The Up and Overs, it read

Team 1 was instructed to exit cave and prepare to be airlifted off the mountain.

Team 2 was joined by an additional member and made its way to Salvation Hall where the missing party was located, waiting for assistance but OK apart from some members beginning to suffer from the cold. After the missing party had been given a warm meal they were escorted out of the cave. All personnel had exited the cave by 1830 hours.

When the party reached the bottom of the ladder on the entrance side of The Up and Overs they found themselves in waist deep water. This they were not expecting, and as they had not met the party which was supposed to be meeting them they assumed that the cave was sumped at a place called The Ducks, they attempted to find a way through but failed. They then returned to Salvation Hall to await rescue. In fact the way was clear and they were only about 30 minutes from the exit.

All parties attempting the through trip require at least one party member with previous experience of the trip.

Equipment should include sources of heat suitable for heating food and drink and reheating bodies

Communications within the cave via the Michie phone once again proved invaluable, without it Team 2 would have spent at least 12 more hours in the cave.

Few of the cavers had previous winch experience and were most impressed by the skill of the air crew at putting them and their gear precisely where they wanted to be.

Arthur Freeman
NZLSAR Cave Adviser
Nelson District

It has become increasingly apparent that the NZ Police Land Search and Rescue Advisers List has a significant number of errors, omissions or lacks information in important areas. The need for a review of the document was highlighted by a senior and very resourceful Wellington Adviser, working at the National Rescue Coordination Centre in desperation phoning the NZLSAR National Field Officer at a late hour for some simple but necessary Adviser details.

Previously the compiling of the list was carried out by Police Headquarters staff and with the tardiness of some District returns, was often an extremely frustrating task.

To alleviate those problems of the past, the NZLSAR NFO will keep the Advisers List on a database with the belief that it is a list of volunteers and they should accept the responsibility and discipline of keeping it up to date.

This is not intended to change the need for the final acceptance by the Police for the Advisers in your District. The Advisers, good or bad, reflect their approval. To help the Police SAR Coordinators "grasp the nettle" of ensuring the need for an Adviser is established, bringing in younger people and retiring with dignity those that have served us well, it is considered that a regular District annual review be made. It is suggested that at your annual District meeting in June each year (Police General Instruction S375 (1) refers) the necessary consideration be given to confirmation or otherwise of existing Advisers and details be forwarded to the national Coordinator: SAR no later than 30 June (G.I. S379 (2) refers) who will refer those details on to the NZLSAR NFO. This will allow me to make any revisions needed and circulate a copy to all concerned by the end of August each year.

To overcome the immediate problems and as a temporary "quick fix" a letter has been sent to each of the Police SAR Coordinators with the request that they check the information currently available, complete the forms provided and forward to Police National Headquarters by 29 February 1996. This will allow a working document to be trialled and any bugs can be ironed out for the final print in August. As previously the ability to produce the Advisers List relies on the success and correctness of the data collection and the timely forwarding to this office, so I would appreciate all the help you can provide. Ask your District SAR Coordinator to ensure the forms are filled in and returned.

The Data Collection forms are in a draft stage and any comment on these or the

information collected will also be most appreciated.

As mentioned in the last Newsletter the next Committee meeting will be held on 16 March starting at 0900 Hours in the large conference room at the Wellington Airport. All papers for the meeting need to be in my hand by Friday 16 February so an agenda can be drawn up and circulated

Emergency Locater Transmitters and policy recommendation’s for emergency communications from remote areas, standards for radio operators, training aids, battery types and their use in the NZLSAR environment, radio frequencies and radio licence issues, future radio policy and replacement policy and replacement strategy and new HF radios for the replacement of the Condor sets

Each of the above topics will be addressed over the following issues of the newsletter but for this round we will have a look at the new PolSAR HF radios and make a short comment on cell phones.

Members will be interested to know the Police have purchased 50 new radios as a possible replacement for the TR105’s Codan/Condor radios currently in use. These sets will be available for release to Districts requiring replacements for their existing sets.

The new radios are of a similar design and size to the Condor sets but there are some significant differences. The colour of the sets are bright rescue orange (including the carry bag). Battery status is indicated by red and orange LEDs on the top of the front panel, the mic, speaker and press to talk switch are all on the front of the set. Antenna connections for dipole, coax connector and 12 volt power plug are conveniently placed along the top of the set.

The sets are currently under evaluation by all the members of the CSC over the summer holiday period. At the time of writing several tests had been undertaken which showed up some minor faults. However it is expected these will be quickly rectified and this should lead to improvements in future models. The set I used had no problems communicating from Napier to a base station in Tauranga.

Evaluation will be an ongoing process and any feed back we can obtain from field operations would be useful to assist in the ongoing improvement of equipment purchased in the future. If you have any problem with the sets or can offer suggestions for improvements please feel free to get in contact with the Committee so we can pool ideas and incorporate them where possible in any development programme. All suggestions should be sent to the CSC through John Tristram, the National Field Officer, so he can record the information for the policy group and circulate copies to all Committee members.

Cell phones are being used more and more in the hills and two incidents within 24 hours highlights some of the problems Advisers need to be prepared for. The incidents occurred on New Years eve, one in the Kaweka Ranges and the other in the Ruahine Ranges. Both incidents related to tramping parties lost in mist on ridge tops and were ringing for assistance. Quick thinking is required as there are many issues to establish and with the possibility of the cell phone running out of batteries, time is all important. Consider what advice you would give if you are contacted by someone who is standing in the middle of a scree, off the top of the main ridge and they cannot see a thing. You are not sure if they turned off the main range to the east or west or if they have picked up the correct spur to come down. To really compound your problem as an Adviser the disoriented party inform you they are cold, exhausted and have lost confidence in their ability to continue.

Both groups spent the night out. One group was directed to a hut in the area and was picked up by a tramping party that we had radio contact with and the other group spent a wet night on the tops and remained there until a search team could make contact with them in the afternoon of the second day.

Think about it. You are going to get a lot more of these problems. When the time comes you can do a lot more for a person at the other end if you have prepared a checklist of questions in a logical sequence rather than try to think of questions off the cuff.

Graham Thorp CSC Chairman
Region Three Representative
Napier District NZLSAR Land Adviser

Oops. With the need to shuffle dates around to accommodate some busy peoples lives, the Advisers Standards Workshop mentioned in the last newsletter as being on the 14/15/16 June will now not be held until

21/22/23 June, that is a week later. This Workshop, which will be held at the Police College, is for all the Region Three and Four Advisers who may have missed out on a previous Workshop in their District. There will be more information nearer the time but pencil the weekend in your diaries now.

I would like to thank Graham Thorp and Arthur Freeman for their articles. Thanks also to Tony McLeod and Jim McLean for the assistance with the article about the EPIRB and subsequent rescue. The closeoff date for copy for the April edition will be Friday 22 March 1996 Feel free to putting pen to paper on matters pertaining to Land SAR or activities in the outdoors. Hand written (neatly) is most acceptable and don’t worry about the spelling, Microsoft Word has a great spellcheck. Regards, John P Tristram

For the first time in New Zealand an electronic locater transmitter was used on land to indicate that a person was lost and subsequently to "home in" and find the missing person. Here is a short precis on the resulting search for the person and the subsequent rescue

The debriefing was told the missing person had been flown in from Karamea and had been dropped off on the beach south of the Kaharangi Lighthouse some three weeks earlier. His intentions were to find an alternative route along the coast parallel to the Heaphy that would allow people to walk the track and return to their vehicles. On the morning of the 20 December, taking with him an EPIRB with the lead ballast removed, he had gone from his camp up and along a ridge but when returning became lost and spent the night out. The next day on the understanding that five days rain was imminent, there was a river to cross and that there were only a few days until Christmas and not wanting to have people looking for him over this period he activated the EPIRB at about 1130. Upon being reached by the rescuers he was walked back to the beach and was picked up by the helicopter as arranged on the 23 December.