A different kind of emergency
I’m used to the pager going off in the middle of the night, but believe it or not I have had “emergencies” in my other line of work (software engineering) as well. One such happened last Wednesday. In my day …
Author: Michael Coyle
SAR Day 42 and 43:
Some SAR Days are exciting, and some are not. On the weekend the team was paged out for several missing hikers; I did not attend the search, but from time differential between when the pager went off and the stand …
Climbing like a pregnant woman
The other day I was climbing a well known 5.8 test piece in Squamish. I led, and Sylvia, who is 6 months pregnant, seconded it. About half way up she was heard to say “I think we’re at the inflection point; …
RFC 2119
You may not know this but most of the internet is based on a series of standards known as an RFC. They started out as a way to kick off a discussion on how to solve a problem, but rapidly …
How not to load someone in a helicopter
The following link has some text and a video clip from a recent rescue in the Fraser Valley. http://bc.rcmp.ca/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=50&languageId=1&contentId;=15653 As you can see they are performing what we call a hover stretcher load, which I wrote about today. Now I …
SAR Day 41: Helicopter training
As noted in past posts, we do a lot of helicopter work. Sunday covered some advanced helicopter techniques, such as this: a hovering helicopter, and SAR member in the back seat, doors off. Team on the ground passes the stretcher …
SAR Day 40: Rescue on Diez Vistas
I was unable to make this rescue. From what I gather, the team was called to rescue an injured subject on the Diez Vistas trail, around Vista 6. Members hover-exited at Vista 3 and hike to the site. The subject …
SAR Day 39: Rescue on Eagle Ridge
What follows is a first person account of a recent rescue on Eagle Ridge. At approximately 16:30 I get paged: “All members call task line for injured hiker at Buntzen Lake“. I dial in and hear the SAR manager describing …
SAR Days 21 through 38
That’s a lot of SAR Days. Since last I posted, we’ve done 18 days of training, mostly in the Rope Rescue area. Itemized below and updated in my ongoing log. Day 21: Technical travel skills. At least half of the …
Maps vs. Air Photos
Now that everyone with an internet connection has access to Google Earth and Google Maps, we all have access to some fairly high quality air photo imagery. This might seem to be a good thing, but there are problems with …