I wanted to share my review of a book with our audience this week. It’s called Lost Person Behavior by Robert J. Koester.
My wife and I have belonged to our area’s CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) group for years. Well, a few years ago, we had the opportunity to take part in a training course on Search and Rescue. This was an excellent class! It was put on by the great folks at TEEX (https://teex.org/), the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service. They are a leader in the delivery of emergency response, homeland security and workforce training and exercises, technical assistance, and economic development.
WHAT WAS IN THE CLASS?
I tell you, they delivered. The small group was very prepared with plans, thoughts, ideas and materials on how to train our groups on the many different aspects of SAR. At one point, we were broken up into teams of 4-7 people. They would hand each table a map and markers and some other documentation. The idea was to listen to the initial report of a “Lost Person”, and using the information gleaned from this book, we were to estimate approximately where the person might be, or might be headed. We were to establish primary and secondary search areas. At certain intervals (only about 5-10 minutes, the instructors would walk around and make another announcement…
“24 hours have passed… new report tells of a red hat, much like the lost person was last seen wearing was found along a particular path.”
We would re-focus our efforts on additional areas with this new information. We had made it through about 2-3 scenarios already, and we were all considering it much like a game, even a competition. We started a new exercise. The lost subject was an elderly man, pretty healthy, who was up in the mountains searching for some ginsing plants. He was last seen, in good spirits, and headed out to his “regular spot”, at about 1pm on a Sunday after church.
Based upon his LKP (Last Known Point) and PLS (Point Last Seen), we had made it through the first couple of “days”, which were actually just five to ten minute periods, providing guidance to our imaginary search crews. Eventually, the instructor gives us one more clue, and it happened to be on day three. According to our guidebook, this estimates an approximate 40% survivability rate, if the subject is healthy!
Day 4 went by very quickly. Things got… more urgent, and although we had a tremendous effort by the team, our table had not found the subject. Another did. We asked how as he found.
“The subject, as mentioned, was an elderly man, and after three and a half days of searching, the gent was indeed found deceased in a cave, less than a mile from the red hat that was found on day two… He apparently had left it as a clue for people to track him as he had broken his foot and couldn’t walk. It appears he died in a cave of a heart attack…”
I was struck at this moment. These “excercises” are actual people that some of these instructors had actually searched for… and found, in this case… deceased. My demeanor immediately changed, and from that point on I wanted to continue to learn more and more about the subject of Search and Rescue.
This brings me to the book, Lost Person Behavior. It was the resource manual we used to estimate direction, distance, intention and even survivability of each of the lost subjects. If one were to actually read through the book, they would glean knowledge of how a lost person actually behaves, as the title would suggest. But more than this, the book defines what it really is to be “Lost”. Not to mention they would get tremendous history of the development of the ISRID (International Search and Rescue Incident Database). This is a compilation of thousands of incidents of lost persons around the globe. This database defines subject categories (identifying a person as a “Gatherer”, or “Angler”, “Child” or “Camper”, and identifies those with dementia or despondency. there are many different categories.
The ISRID primarily looks at lost person data in several ways, ,such as:
- Population Density (urban versus non-urban incidents)
- Group Behavior
- Special Groups
- Subject Scenarios
- Search Scenarios
- Search Times
- Mobility and Responsiveness
- Times and Distances
Additionally the book reviews subjects such as Lost person strategies, in which we get to dive deeper into what the person might be thinking. For example… is their traveling random, route-based, or direction-based. Do they appear to have been sampling routes or directions, perhaps to enhance their view of an area? Are they backtracking for any reason?
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
One additional interesting topic covered in the book is the Lost Person Myths and Legends. In this section, they discuss some of the more common mistakes people make and spread around, and they are absolutely false. For example, they cover:
- Lost persons will turn in the direction of their dominant hand (left or right)
- Initial search efforts should be directed at the statistical median because of a donut hole pattern of lost person behavior
- Lost persons almost always travel downhill
- Mental retardation subjects behave like lost children
- Lost person behavior profiles tell you where the subject is located
- Subjects do not travel at night
- Subjects over 65 can all be treated as one category
- Investigation always trumps statistical profiles
Each of these myths, can hold some value, but reviews within the Lost Person Behavior book prove that severe and often deadly mistakes can be made by SAR professionals using these myths.
THE END
The book ends with some intriguing and seemingly obvious statements. But I thoughts I’d provide some of them here.
“In order to find a lost person you must look in the right place. Lost person behavior is one of the most important tools in determining where to look… A thorough understanding of Lost person behavior elevated on to a true SAR professional. Search planning is more of an art than a science.”
I truly hope you will take the opportunity to engage with a local Search and Rescue team in your area. But before you do, take some time to read through the Lost Person Behavior Book. It’s a quick read, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Click Here to find it on Amazon
@genxtalkin