NZLSAR News

Volume 3 Issue 2 April 1997

CONTENTS:

Bendigo SAREX

Recently NZLSAR facilitated a weekend national SAREX in the Bendigo Goldfield Park just up the road from the Central Otago township of Cromwell. The weekend had clear goals and the objectives were:-

The key participants in this exercise were Police, Cavers, ACR teams, a Mines Rescue team and support from Red Cross, St Johns, Otago Tramping and Mountaineering Club, Fire Service, AREC, NZ Alpine Search Dogs, 4 wheel drive personnel and the Cromwell Senior Netball Players (catering). Below is an article from the point of view of John Cox who acted as Field Controller for a time and a few of the difficulties he and the management team encountered.

Bendigo - The Challenge of the Location

The Department of Conservation has taken over the management of this site through the tenure review of the pastoral lease previously in force. The area is an outcropping of gold bearing schist strata, about two hundred metres up on the Dunstan Range with views to Lake Dunstan, the Clutha River and the Pisa Range beyond. The vegetation consists of briar rose, manuka scrub and open grass land grazed by rabbits and stray sheep. Within this area (which can be walked around in a little over two hours) is a small stream, thirty metre high bluffs in several places, a number of derelict stone buildings, some huge "dry stone walls" and old gold workings consisting of nearly three hundred mine-shafts, many with attendant tailing dumps. A number of the mine-shafts, both vertical and inclined, suffer collapsing of the sub-surface layers possibly due to the weakening by the frost action. The deepest searched was a little less than one hundred vertical metres deep

The climate is typical of a continental type and tends to be extreme, incredibly hot and dry in summer with heat convection on calm days or cold, foggy and prone to snowfall and bitter freezing in the winter.

The scenario

The situation as presented to us was that a middle aged male, may or may not have gone for a wander in the Park a couple of days previously, perhaps with or without his young grand-daughter. An informant (a local heavy imbiber) said that he had definitely dropped a male off at the entrance but didn’t know where he was going and was unsure of any female. As they had not turned up at any other known location, it was decided in conjunction with the Police actions in the R.O.W. to initiate a search of the Park.

Search methods

As a first sweep through the area on Saturday morning it was decided to use the search dogs. We found that air-scenting dogs could be used early in the day (before 0900) and before the convection carries the subjects scent high into the air beyond detection. Despite our concerns the dogs worked between the hazards of the open shafts without compromising their safety. It is important to close the search area to all other sources of scent such as personnel, vehicles and aircraft while the dogs are working. Scent appearing from a vertical shaft may have been carried by natural ventilation through cracks and fissures from a source further away.

A sound sweep (by whistle) was also tried. The broken country made it difficult to follow a compass bearing and this method would probably not have a high POD. Unless standing on the lip and whistling down the hole, a responsive patient neither heard, nor was able to be heard from any distance away.

The most successful method in this instance was to mimic the probable approach of the lost subject, in this case a "fossicking tourist" The searchers were briefed to work in pairs (for safety) and check the system of marked open walking tracks among the mine shafts, allowing for deviation to points of interest that may have attracted a fossicker. A requirement, not easily overcome in a public park, is to leave a record or mark on the ground of areas checked so they are not over searched by other parties.

Searching underground is a separate challenge due to the time to set up equipment. In the absence of good clues on the surface to prioritise the shafts, the hasty checking of all three hundred holes would be daunting. Would it be possible to place a ladder across the top and shine a torch down the shaft? Could a video camera and lights be lowered into the shaft (up to one hundred metres deep). Our experience that weekend showed that there are special problems which need to be further considered.

Night Searching

This should improve detection by both sound sweep and an air scenting dog. Unfortunately the safety of the searchers could be put at risk as many vertical shafts are unmarked and some were reported as having a light and rotting timber and earth covering. With this in mind, night search was not used on this exercise.

Sufficient to say both missing

subjects were found by the pairs of "fossicking searchers". The elderly male was discovered by checking a steeply inclined shaft that had an obvious entrance way into it and the young girls (a small dummy) presence at the bottom of a twenty metre vertical hole was detected by light scrape marks and torn grass on the lip. Both subjects were extricated with the assistance of ropes and pulleys

Subsequent to this weekend Dunedin SAR committee members are developing a pre-plan for searching shafted areas.

John Cox
Otago Tramping and Mountaineering Club

Police, DoC and SAR at Mt Cook

Progress report of the Central Southern Alps SAR Working party

A joint working party comprising of three Police and three Department of Conservation officials has been set up at the request of the Ministers of Conservation and Police to address issues relating to search and rescue in the Central Southern Alps. The outcomes required of this working party are:- to recommend an appropriate service level for search and rescue for Mount Cook and Central Southern Alps; to make recommendations to the Ministers regarding provisions of service and standards required and to advise on financial implications.

The Working Party is keen to ensure that consultation occurs so that a New Zealand model for alpine search and rescue is identified which will match best international practice and is both economically viable and practical for the Central Southern Alps. It is recognised that there are potential solutions and quality practices already in existence in New Zealand with current alpine rescue models in Queenstown, Wanaka, Ruapahu to name a few.

Therefore the Working Party is consulting with various government and private sector agencies and other interest groups, with organisations being invited to make verbal presentations to their written submissions during the first week of April in Christchurch.

In particular NZLSAR has been recognised as a critical agency with which to consult - for its relationship to the Police and its unique contribution to search and rescue in New Zealand and has been invited to assist the task of the SAR Working Party. Murray Cullen was designated at a recent meeting of NZLSAR as the member to liaise with the SAR Working Party and to access the Alpine Cliff Rescue network for ideas to communicate to the Working Party.

At the same time as consultation is occurring, research is also being conducted into overseas models and international practices for alpine search and rescue so that the Working Party can benchmark any New Zealand model which is developed and check that it will meet best international practices. Also data for SAR incidents in the Mount Cook region is being analysed and skills and competencies identified for all personnel likely to be involved in alpine SAR - from the managers and air crew to the paramedics and alpine team members.

It is expected that all research and comment will be brought together into a report to the Ministers by the end of April 1997.

Liz Dickinson for Paul Dale
Central Southern Alps SAR Working Party

Case Based Reasoning (CBR) - An Assistance to SAR or Witchcraft?

Recently a meeting was held at the Dunedin University between several senior SAR practitioners and Associate Professor Doctor George Benwell, Academic Director of Research. He has a student, Alec Holt, who wants to do, as his project for his doctorate, research that would allow search personnel to type into a computer all the missing persons details and with the developed program show the Field Controller, on a map in percentage terms, where the missing person may be. In the first hour of the meeting, George followed an agenda which included explaining the concept and its chances of success, the need for a team approach (both national and local, SAR and academia) and the funding of such a project. Then Alec arrived and explained the principals of CBR and what SAR may expect from his work. As a computer semi-illiterate I was having trouble believing that it was possible, hence my question, is it "witchcraft"? Well it appears that CBR as a principle is well established in such diverse fields as battle planning, geological deposit prediction, machine tool fault diagnosis and even at what angle and how much power is needed to zap a cancer in the lungs. From a data base of past operations, CBR, for a current operation, retrieves relevant instances, compares the present situation and is able to give clear direction as to the Probabilities of Area (POA). Realising the cooperation needed to gather and maintain such a large amount of information as well as the knowledge and experience held by NZLSAR members, George has asked for the approval of NZLSAR before proceeding any further. The Committee has subsequently considered his request and has given full support for the proposal. They have also asked for the endorsement of the project by the NZ Police.

John P Tristram
National Field Officer

DREAM DEBUT FOR T.C.A. SEARCHERS

Just after 3.30pm on Sunday 9th March, Ross Gordon was winding down after giving an Introductory Track and Clue Awareness weekend in Dunedin. At 3.38 Adviser Roger Barrowclough was paged and at 3.50pm the pager code was issued for the First Response Search Team. On arrival at the police station, I found that we also had Peter (Jock) Walton and David Millar direct from the TCA course. The search control room was also trying to deal with several marine emergencies on the Otago Harbour caused by a sudden storm that had come through at that time.

Our search was for a 10 year old boy missing from a youth camp since about 2.30pm. Darkness would be at about 8.30pm, and there was every expectation that this would become a prolonged night search. While long term planning was being set up, 5 searchers (all TCA trained) headed south down the highway in a police van, with the First Response radio gear box from the SAR store and plenty of torches of our own. Our brief was to assess the scene, establish the exact location the missing person had been last seen at and try to secure uncontaminated scent articles for the search dogs that were not far behind us. A short interview with police on the scene and with the adult supervisor established a lost person profile to work from.

At 5.15pm a Sign Cutting Team was deployed to a creek alongside the house and the TCA proteges were to search for clues around the base of the building. Signs of disturbance just under the edge of the building led to another strong sign further under and then a third sign. Torchlight revealed a movement further back among the foundations. By 5.26 the little chap had been enticed out of his lair and taken inside to warm up. During our debrief on the way back to Dunedin it was apparent that our new TCA trainees were buzzing with satisfaction. Well done team!

John Cox
Dunedin First Response Team

The shape of things to come

NZLSAR, following the requests of the respondents to the questionnaire sent out prior to the organisations creation, was structured to provide the Committee with a SAR experienced membership from across the country. The then six Police Regions provided logical albeit not terribly convenient boundaries for the Regional Representatives. Since the incorporation of NZLSAR in late 1994, the Police have been undergoing a series of changes in their structures. Last year Region Six was amalgamated with Region Five and realising that further changes were to take place, the Committee decided not to change the Constitution at that time. Instead it elected to continued the regional representation as before the change and hold off any rewriting until the Police structure became clear and settled. Following further work by the Police Structures Project it has been announced that from 1 July 1997 the five Police Regions and twenty-six Districts will be replaced with four Regions and sixteen Districts. This seems to be an interim stage in that there is a further proposal for the same time in 1998 to have no Regions and either twelve or sixteen Districts. Some questions for NZLSAR come immediately to mind.

Firstly it has to be fair, democratic, transparent, all the buzz words I hear from down the road. However all who comply with Rule 4e in having the required extensive SAR management background must have an equal chance of serving NZLSAR. Accordingly what method of selection is required?

How is NZLSAR to get a representation with a geographical spread onto the Committee? Take a person from each of the Districts? With possibly sixteen and even twelve persons this could make it unwieldy, perhaps even unworkable and may not be an option. Take the easy way and divide the number of Districts, say twelve, by two and there’s the six reps. Again neither practical nor really managing the process.

People need to give this some consideration between now and this time next year, as enough may be revealed of the final Police structure to make alterations to the Constitution at the August 1998 AGM possible. Below is a map of the proposed second phase with the boundaries being aligned with those of the Territorial Local Authorities (TLA’s).

John P Tristram
National Field Officer