Montrose Search and Rescue – Modern Cellphone Rescues

Last week I told the story of one of the first cellphone calls for help by a lost hiker – circa 1991. I checked in with current MSAR member Steve Goldsworthy to find out the state of rescue technology in the field of cellphones. Steve is the rescue team’s “techie.” When I asked him if they used modern cellphone technology in their searches, he told me: “Mike, not only are we into the technology, but we lead the use of cell technologies county-wide. Not just cellphones, but we’ve used social media to track people down as well.”

“We use everything we can find. We have a specially designed text message that we can send to a hiker’s cellphone. When he responds, we automatically receive his coordinates from his GPS enabled cellphone. We ping phones (only works if you have both battery and cell service) and we can obtain cellphone records that might show us an area where you were the last time your cellphone communicated to a cell tower.”

Steve refers to being able to “ping” cellphones. MSAR can ask the cellphone company to have the hiker’s phone automatically send out a signal (ping). They can then triangulate his location from the cell towers that received the ping. As well, many phones contain tracking software, designed to find lost or stolen phones, which can in turn find the lost hiker holding the phone. A 9-1-1 call will also transmit the caller’s location.

Steve has passed along a couple of rescue stories that illustrate just how using modern technology has saved lives. Steve is an excellent writer, so I’ll let him tell the story.

“On Sept. 9, 2014, fresh snow blanketed Mt. Baden-Powell, and two snowboarders and one Golden Retriever decided to hit the slopes. After a few hours, a new storm was blowing in. The dog jumped down a ravine onto a small ledge and became trapped. Darkness was falling, and so was visibility. The pet owner jumped down after his dog and then soon realized that he, too, was now trapped on a narrow ledge, unable to climb down or back up. His partner left for help as the storm hit. A 9-1-1 call was received at the Palmdale Station. It was the trapped snowboarder, now stuck on a ledge in the dark, with snow falling and blizzard-like conditions.

“Rescuers from Antelope Valley SAR responded, and after a few hours searching in the snowstorm they called Montrose SAR, asking for assistance. Search teams were in the field for hours, but no sign of the snowboarder was found. We could call him on his cellphone, but we just couldn’t find him.

“Around 11 p.m. that night, a Montrose SAR member called him on his cell. The lost snowboarder was now losing all hope of being found. His battery life was at 4%; he was hypothermic and sounded lethargic and scared on the phone. He said he knew he was going to die soon, and he didn’t want to die or leave his dog alone. Nothing seemed to work, and the coordinates we were being given from the 9-1-1 system didn’t match the area we were told he was in.

“Trying another tack, we asked the victim to take a photo with his cellphone and send it to us. We ran that photo through our computer and, luckily, it was geotagged with his exact location! (Geotagging is when your phone knows your location, and adds that location into the properties of your photos.) Quickly those coordinates were converted and a field team dispatched. Less than 10 minutes later, rescuers were calling his name when they heard his faint reply. Within the hour they were on the ledge with him and his dog, and they made it out just fine. The photo that he took of a tree with snow swirling around it still resides on our team’s computer.”

Steve’s story shows just how tech-savvy rescuers are using technology to save lives.

Next week, a story on finding a lost hiker via Facebook.