Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Camp Bonner Search Exercise
The big activity this week was going to the wilderness land search exercise at Boy Scout Camp Bonner just east of Washington, NC. It was hosted by Downeast Search & Rescue otherwise known as the "Swamp Rats". I left just after lunch on Friday and arrived there approximately 4 hours later. We just hung around during the evening while things were getting organized. Our cook, George put together a quickie supper which wasn't originally planned. I went to bed in the back of my pickup truck at about 9:30. Generally slept well except that my feet were cold in spite of the cozy down mummy style sleeping bag. I remedied that by putting a couple of "hot hands" (handwarmers) in my socks.
To the right, Mark and his bloodhound take a break for some water.
Saturday morning dawned on us with temps in the mid 20s with a clear blue sky. The picture to the left shows the command staff getting the search organized. We use the National Incident Managent System (NIMS) to organize our searches.
After breakfast we were assigned our first mission. I was the team navigator which meant that I had to keep track of where we were all of the time and keep a log on the mission. We had a big, I mean BIG bloodhound with us. We started at the point last seen (PLS) which was at a campsite in Goose Creek State Park. The dog kinda' circled around in th
e brush for a little while until we came out in a hiking trail. He picked up a trail and from then on it was keep up with the dog. We checked foot prints in the sand and I took several pictures so that we could hopefully identify who we were tracking. By noon, we definitely established the direction of travel of the subject and went back to camp for lunch. It was a beautiful warm day with bright sunshine and temperatures around 60.
e brush for a little while until we came out in a hiking trail. He picked up a trail and from then on it was keep up with the dog. We checked foot prints in the sand and I took several pictures so that we could hopefully identify who we were tracking. By noon, we definitely established the direction of travel of the subject and went back to camp for lunch. It was a beautiful warm day with bright sunshine and temperatures around 60.To the right, Mark and his bloodhound take a break for some water.
I was the team leader on another mission later in the afternoon just to check out part of the same trail for any physical evidence that we might be able to find.
That evening, George cooked barbecue chicken which was extremely delicious. After supper, I headed for home arriving abpout 1:00 a.m.
One of the benefits of this trip was that I met three members of "Lee County Land Search Team". Lee County is our neighboring county just to the northeast of us with Sanford as the major town. We discussed how we could work together in training and assisting each other on searches.
This was a valuable and fun weekend and I am looking forward the the next one for 3-1/2 days at Burke County in the mountains at the end of March.
# posted by Bob @ 2/27/2007 06:38:00 PM 
