In Los Angeles County’s San Gabriel Mountains this past August, during a heat wave, a hiker who was out searching for a woman who has been missing since June 22 had to be rescued after falling ill on Mt. Waterman. L.A. County search teams, aided by other counties around the state, had already conducted more than 12 operational periods of searching the area, which is steep, rugged terrain with peaks that top out at 10,000 feet. LASD’s Montrose Search and Rescue had put out a warning on social media asking untrained volunteers to stay out of the search area: “While we deeply appreciate the public’s compassion, we strongly discourage anyone from self-deploying to search. These conditions are dangerous and require specialized training, coordination, and resources. Uncoordinated efforts risk interfering with the mission or creating new emergencies.”
Searches can attract the attention of untrained, or spontaneous, volunteers. As the Los Angeles example shows, sometimes they impede the search rather than help, or create new problems. Natural disasters also bring out such convergent volunteers, as they are also called. This happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the Texas floods earlier this year. Teams and local agencies have various approaches to dealing with such volunteers, from bringing them into the fold and having them work alongside trained members, to asking them stay away or barring them from entry to areas. Often, which tact to take depends on the unique situation.
Some agencies are strict about not involving untrained volunteers, others consider it on a case by case basis. In addition to concerns about injury or liability, untrained searchers can inadvertently destroy clues, be unable to help a subject medically if found or unable to communicate with the command post if injured or lost. “They become more of a liability than a help,” said Chris Boyer, Executive Director of the National Association of Search and Rescue. “They don’t understand the risk involved and they don’t come with the right tools.”
In June, a search effort to find three men who jumped off Rattlesnake Falls in a remote area of Place County, Calif., near Lake Tahoe, lasted three days and included many agencies. On a stormy Saturday afternoon, Juan Heredia, a volunteer diver who has helped find many victims who were lost in water, hiked several hours to the site and recovered all three bodies, dragging them up from under the falls and notifying the sheriff. Heredia was not part of the official search and rescue teams. Recently, Heredia made news when he made a video that circulated on social media saying that he was turned away from an active search in Bend, Oregon. He said officials from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office turned him away from Dillon Falls, where they were trying to recover the final body from a group of six who had gone over the falls. The victim’s family issued a statement through the sheriff’s office that said, in part: “This search is more complex than most people realize.” They asked that Heredia not comment further about the case. “His involvement is not part of the coordinated response, and we do not want the hard work of these trained professionals questioned or disrupted.”
Sometimes, however, family and friends will show up to assist in a search and it can be important to include them to the extent possible so that they feel useful and are comfortable and apprised of the efforts of the search teams. NASAR’s Boyer suggested having plans in place to provide work for convergent volunteers if they are likely to show up – things like posting missing person flyers, or stationing them at trailheads or areas where they can increase awareness. This can be vitally important when a search is suspended without a find. Making sure the family knows what efforts were made, investigations that are continuing and how new clues will be followed up on is important when suspending continuous search operations, Boyer said.
In Big Horn County, Wyoming, an intensive search for a Minnesota man who went missing during a three-day hiking trip attracted many spontaneous volunteers who fanned out in the area and prompted the sheriff to issue warnings. Grant Gardner was reported missing after failing to check in during a three-day camping trip that was to include a summit of Cloud Peak, a 13,000-foot peak in northern Wyoming. He was last heard from when he phoned his wife from the peak.
The search lasted several weeks, with Big Horn County’s 60-member SAR team spending ten days in the field and facing steep terrain with crevasses and caves in addition to variable weather that forced them off the mountain several times. Sheriff Ken Blackburn said the family was very understanding of the challenges in allowing untrained volunteers into technical and unforgiving terrain. After exhausting his local SAR members, Blackburn made the decision to let spontaneous volunteers help continue the search, asking them to check with his office about when they would be out, planned routes and sending GPS tracks back so the search team could track areas that had been covered.
“Knowing when, who and how to put them in is difficult,” Blackburn said. “We wanted to be careful.” The final weeks of searching were done mostly by untrained members of the public, from locals with knowledge of the area to mountaineers who were in the area on planned trips and had the experience and ability to navigate the terrain. “They did a fantastic job for us,” Blackburn said. In the end, two climbers from out of state who were in the area to climb Cloud Peak noticed a backpack and called authorities. Gardner’s remains were located nearby on the north side of the mountain.
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