Who to call if an AT hiker goes missing?

[TheYoungOne]

Don't panic folks, its just for a book I'm writing.

Say someone is hiking the AT in PA. Dayhike to the Pinnicle, and they never came back, who would run the search for the missing person?

That area is a mix of PA state game land and State parks. Would the search be run by the PA game wardens, PA state police, the County PD or maybe police from the closes large town like Hamburg or Allentown?

Anyone have any experience with searching for a missing person in the woods. If I knew the area well I would jump on the opportunity to volunteer to help.

[Skidsteer]

Rather than try to keep up with the local jurisdiction info, I carry the number for ATC law enforcement.

(304) 535-6171

[vamelungeon]

In an emergency it's hard to go wrong by calling 911. If you get the wrong agency chances are they will direct you to the proper authorities.

[Skidsteer]

Good point but I always forget the number.

[Del Q]

I used to be on a search & rescue team, happened to be in Philadelphia, our team would have responded to something in the Pocono's. SAR is a skill, have seen search dogs do some pretty amazing things.

If you are writing a book, pretty simple but really important, a text message will go through when a cell phone call will not.

I keep all State Police numbers programmed into my phone and others like the ATC Enforcement number, etc, etc.

[GoldenBear]

I asked pretty much this same question a few years ago, in order to tell Shuttle who to call if *I* go missing -- and I hike a lot in Pennsylvania.

The general consensus is to call 911 if you have a good idea where the person was in the last day or so. This is true even if you are hundreds of miles away from where that person should be. The 911 system was developed for rapid inter-agency response to trouble wherever it may be.

If you have little or no idea where the missing person might be, then the ATC would be the best place to start. They would be able to use their resources to (relatively) quickly determine where the person last was; and from there a more detailed search could occur. I know it would be painful to have to wait several days before knowing that a specific search has commenced, but that's the price hikers are imposing on others if they fail to consistently communicate with family and friends.

[4eyedbuzzard]

In the real world you call 911 or local law enforcement and people usually get found one way or another by LEO or S&R. In a book the local cops are either incompetent or in on an abduction for ritualistic sacrifice or something, and you call the BAU in Quantico and they track down the unsub - or in the event they've crossed over into another universe you call Olivia.

[fiddlehead]

Lenhartsville is very close to the Pinnacle.
In fact you can get there in one mile by using Blue Rocks campground and a trail from there.
I did it once on Christmas Day.
However, I don't know if Lehnartsville has a police dept.
They probably have a volunteer fire dept.
But I bet 911 people would know.
That (911) is certainly who I would trust to know what rescue people would be closest.

[nyrslr21]

In the real world you call 911 or local law enforcement and people usually get found one way or another by LEO or S&R. In a book the local cops are either incompetent or in on an abduction for ritualistic sacrifice or something, and you call the BAU in Quantico and they track down the unsub - or in the event they've crossed over into another universe you call Olivia.

Hahaha that damn Massive Dynamic is behind everything!

[gram cracker]

I know it's a bit off topic. I consider a SPOT transmitter as part of my essential gear. At worst, it can leave electronic breadcrumbs family or a trusted friend can see on their computer. You can send OK, Help or 911 signals to their cell phone, email or both. If 911 is sent, SPOT takes care of it.

[Hooch]

Who ya gonna call?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/Ghostbusters_logo.svg/220px-Ghostbusters_logo.svg.png

[gumball]

We had this happen in VA--lost a hiker who didn't show up in very cold conditions at the shelter. Waited until the next day, hiked out, still no sign. I believe we called 911, who connected us with the appropriate authorities--who eventually found the hiker, later in the day.

Gum

[Rain Man]

Several have mentioned calling 911 with the expectation that they would direct you to the correct 911 jurisdiction. Is that true these days? It certainly did not used to be the case.

Rain Man

.

[4eyedbuzzard]

Several have mentioned calling 911 with the expectation that they would direct you to the correct 911 jurisdiction. Is that true these days? It certainly did not used to be the case.

Rain Man

.It's generally pretty good with GPS enabled phones. But if you're in an area where cell towers are near state borders the system can get messed up. It's always good practice to make sure the 911 operator knows what state you're in when calling from areas where this could happen. We get a lot of confusion here on the NH / VT border with this due to having towers on both sides of the river, or just one tower that serves an area in both states.

[Wise Old Owl]

The police would make that determination - someone would call 911 and the initial questioning would launch the team.

http://www.psarc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36&Itemid=15

For Emergency Dispatch call:
1-800-MED-STAT (1-800-633-7828)

[Wise Old Owl]

It's generally pretty good with GPS enabled phones. But if you're in an area where cell towers are near state borders the system can get messed up. It's always good practice to make sure the 911 operator knows what state you're in when calling from areas where this could happen. We get a lot of confusion here on the NH / VT border with this due to having towers on both sides of the river, or just one tower that serves an area in both states.

The towers have nothing to do with borders... where did you come up with that? 911 systems and dispatch are extended well past all boundaries. The 911 system here is mounted on many towers and exstends into the next state. If you are referring to cell phone coverage - National system national company. - poor service occurs due to terrain or towers that have been knocked out from storms.

The current phones send a gps location and the smrs make a triangulation and signal strength today. What you may be refering to is the olld analog 900 MHz System that is defunked. See Here

http://searchengineland.com/cell-phone-triangulation-accuracy-is-all-over-the-map-14790

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jpg

[Don H]

I live just a few miles from the state border. I have called 911 in one state and got the emergency center in the other state. Most agencies will ID themselves when they answer but it's best to verify you have the correct agency. What happens sometimes is that an address in one agencies area corresponds or is the same as an address in the neighboring agencies area which leads to confusion.

Of course when you're hiking you probably don't know what county you're in. I would think that if you report that you're on the AT and your relative location to a road (such as on the AT about 2 miles south of PA Rt.611) you should get help sent to the correct location.

[Bronk]

Having worked with this kind of thing behind the scenes I can tell you what I would do. I'd start by reporting the person missing at the local law enforcement agency where the person was last seen. Many police departments will not take a report over the telephone because they have no way of verifying who you are, so you will need to go there in person if at all possible.

When you are making this first report, let the officer know where you think they might be...giving a range, ie they started here and were supposed to end up there. At this point you run a serious risk of them trying to dodge the report, ie they might say something like "Well, if you think they're at X you should probably report it to the police department there." Insist on a formal report and to have them entered into the FBI database as a missing person...that last is very important, and there is a way for you to verify that it has been done. Otherwise you might end up playing this game all day and night before you find an agency willing to take the report...ie every agency you contact may try to pawn you off on someone else...this will waste a lot of time.

Be persistent. Some agencies will take a report, enter them in the FBI computer as missing and then punch their time card and go home. Make it clear when you file your report that you would like a search initiated and ask for details on what they plan to do once the report has been made.

Once you've got your initial report made, make sure they are following up on it. Call other police agencies within the area you believe the person may be found and find out if they have been contacted by the original agency you filed your report with. Ask them to look in the FBI computer and see if your person is listed as a missing person. It may take a couple of hours for them to show up in the computer, but if several hours go by and they are not showing up, its time to call back the original agency and ask them when they will be entering the person in the FBI computers, or if necessary try to convince another agency to enter them in as a missing person.

Like I said, be persistent, and make it clear to them that you don't just want to file a report and hope for the best. Ask them to tell you specifically what they plan to do to find the missing person.

[shelterbuilder]

There is, in fact, a procedure for just this sort of occurance.

I'm in the process of writing a shelter chairman's manual (in anticipation of stepping down from that position at the end of 2013), and one of the areas that I wanted to include was SAR at/near the shelters. The procedure is the same for the entire length of the AT in Pa. (and presumably the entire trail): CALL 911. No matter what the emergency, call 911. They will have the resources to direct your call to the appropriate agency for that area, and most of the time, they will be able to zero in on your GPS coordinates from your cell phone signal (or so I'm told).

In Pa., it falls to DCNR to actually run the SAR operation (this is a delegated responsibility as per the Memorandum of Understanding that is currently in force between NPS, ATC, and the various state agencies and local mintaining clubs), but in reality, they will coordinate with as many groups (fire, ambulance corps, SAR, ATC, NPS, and local maintaining clubs) as necessary to get the job done. Most of the time, the only group that will have first-hand knowledge of the terrain and the trails will be the local maintaining club - the other groups will pull out their road maps and may not be able to find the quickest way in to a given location. (Four out of the seven shelters maintained by BMECC have short-cuts that make access a LOT easier than hiking in over the AT, but only someone who has the local "ground-knowledge" could find these easily.)

For all of the complaints about cell phones in the woods, when you absolutely, positively have to get help, a cell phone can be a Godsend - even though there ARE places along the trail where they don't work (like the Rausch Gap Shelter area).

Dial 911.

[rocketsocks]

Don't panic folks, its just for a book I'm writing.

Say someone is hiking the AT in PA. Day Hike to the Pinnacle, and they never came back, who would run the search for the missing person?

That area is a mix of PA state game land and State parks. Would the search be run by the PA game wardens, PA state police, the County PD or maybe police from the closes large town like Hamburg or Allentown?

Anyone have any experience with searching for a missing person in the woods. If I knew the area well I would jump on the opportunity to volunteer to help.So I'm curious,what kinda book are you writing exactly? "how to guide","who done it"...Love story?.......

[Amanita]

The towers have nothing to do with borders... where did you come up with that? 911 systems and dispatch are extended well past all boundaries. The 911 system here is mounted on many towers and exstends into the next state. If you are referring to cell phone coverage - National system national company. - poor service occurs due to terrain or towers that have been knocked out from storms.

The current phones send a gps location and the smrs make a triangulation and signal strength today. What you may be refering to is the olld analog 900 MHz System that is defunked. See Here

http://searchengineland.com/cell-phone-triangulation-accuracy-is-all-over-the-map-14790

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jpg

That's all well and good when your cell is actually within range of 3 towers simultaneously, but that's rarely the case up here in VT. Even making a phone call can be hit or miss in the less densely populated parts of VT. It's not surprising that the border with the area near NH has some mix ups. I know at one point on the Long Trail I had to make a call, and ended up putting the phone on speaker and holding it 2 feet above my head while standing on a large rock to get signal.

[4eyedbuzzard]

Ideally, automatically transmitting your GPS info with the 911 call and/or triangularization works to id your location, route the call to the proper 911 operator, etc, but the PSAP and ALI stuff doesn't work ideally - at least it doesn't up here. First, you're lucky to have one tower in range, and there are many areas where even a good GPS can't get a lock on satellites, so my guess would be that a phone's GPS has the same issues. I'm thinking that info simply isn't always available and that there are "holes" in the overall system as well.

[Wise Old Owl]

Well Vermont is one thing and Maine is quite another.... you need to see this. The carriers in your state are working together to put up a few thousand more towers.

http://vtdigger.org/2011/06/27/campbell-says-vermonts-broadband-initiative-is-on-target-cell-service-lagging-behind-for-2013-deadline/

Access to the internet V

http://www.broadbandexpert.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Vermont-Mobile-Wireless-Broadband-Coverage.jpg

For the other nay-sayers - advanced 911 - triangulates and "discovers" and even calls you back if you hang up.

Location is an important concept in the way that the Enhanced 9-1-1 system works. Location determination depends upon the Automatic Location Information (ALI) database which is maintained on behalf of local governments by contracted private third parties generally the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_Local_Exchange_Carrier) (ILEC). The ALI database is used to both route the call to the appropriate PSAP and when the call arrives, the ALI database is used to determine the location of the caller.
A second phase of Enhanced 911 service is to allow a wireless or mobile telephone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_telephone) to be located.
To locate a mobile telephone geographically, there are two general approaches. One is to use some form of radiolocation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolocation) from the cellular network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_network); the other is to use a Global Positioning System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System) receiver built into the phone itself. Both approaches are described by the Radio resource location services protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_resource_location_services_protocol) (LCS protocol).
Radiolocation in cellular telephony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_telephony) uses base stations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_station). Most often, this is done through triangulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation) between radio towers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_masts_and_towers). The location of the caller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_%28telecommunications%29) or handset (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handset) can be determined several ways:


Angle of arrival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_arrival) (AOA) requires at least two towers, locating the caller at the point where the lines along the angles from each tower intersect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-line_intersection).
Time difference of arrival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration) (TDOA) works like GPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS) using multilateration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration), except that it is the networks that determine the time difference and therefore distance from each tower (as with seismometers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismometer)).
Location signature uses "fingerprinting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint)" to store and recall patterns (such as multipath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipath_propagation)) which mobile phone signals are known to exhibit at different locations in each cell.

[Wise Old Owl]

Ideally, automatically transmitting your GPS info with the 911 call and/or triangularization works to id your location, route the call to the proper 911 operator, etc, but the PSAP and ALI stuff doesn't work ideally - at least it doesn't up here. First, you're lucky to have one tower in range, and there are many areas where even a good GPS can't get a lock on satellites, so my guess would be that a phone's GPS has the same issues. I'm thinking that info simply isn't always available and that there are "holes" in the overall system as well.

Wow, a billion dollar govt. defense system doesn't work? - 4 eye and others please be aware that if you are thinking about something from lets say 5 years ago or ten years ago... the information you have is OLD. My Smartphone recently got a lock in a basement underground with a steel roof. This isn't Magellen 315 or Windows 95. Trees are not a factor as they were in the past as the antennna's for satellites have become more robust and smaller. Signal confusion or not being able to get a lock can still happen in the mountains and around steel skyscrapers.

My phone can get a lock inside my house in 15 seconds. I just tried it.

[Wise Old Owl]

The answer is simple - Ya dial 911. The police arrive and verify, they dispatch SAR and they show up an hour later, they rally a local group to help if needed.

Find fault with that. pull that apart...

As a Amateur Radio Operator that has participated in some of these exercises. (Including the nuclear ones) I have worked in the cell phone industry and have monitored several local search and rescues. - This county has access to dogs, helicoptors, Flir, boats, and loaaaads of people. I can assure you have nothing to worry about.

[Pedaling Fool]

I can assure you have nothing to worry about.As technology advances that certainly seems to be the case. We have nothing to worry about, which begs the quesiton. Nature is all about balance and to maintain balance it ensures large numbers of organisms die. So why would nature create an animal that with a powerful brain that can figure out ways to reduce hazards posed by nature. The very hazards which are designed to keep our numbers in check.:-?

What other animal our size can approach 7 billion and growing. What happens when we figure out how to extend our biological lifespan.

[4eyedbuzzard]

Wow, a billion dollar govt. defense system doesn't work? - 4 eye and others please be aware that if you are thinking about something from lets say 5 years ago or ten years ago... the information you have is OLD. My Smartphone recently got a lock in a basement underground with a steel roof. This isn't Magellen 315 or Windows 95. Trees are not a factor as they were in the past as the antennna's for satellites have become more robust and smaller. Signal confusion or not being able to get a lock can still happen in the mountains and around steel skyscrapers.
My phone can get a lock inside my house in 15 seconds. I just tried it.WOO, I'm thinking the AT qualifies as "in the mountains". At least large parts of it.

I made a 911 call in Nov. 2011 on a two year old GPS enabled phone that connected me to VT 911 and I had to tell them twice that I was in Monroe, NH - not Barnet, VT - so that they could route me to Manchester, NH 911 operator to contact NH State Police. Their location data put me over a mile away on the other side of the CT river. Why I don't know. But I do know that the PSAP service is run by private contractors in many areas (at least here it is). They are for profit, have lots of technical and employee issues, etc. Like any business, I doubt they're perfect. ATC and NORAD aren't the guys tracking my phone (well, maybe they are, but that's a different converstation).

Add that from a practical point, when it comes to actually transmitting that location data, up here there are so many stretches of road and trail and areas that have NO reception of any kind, and I doubt we will ever get 95% coverage. The logistics, money, etc. just don't make it a practical initiative. We all know where most dead zones are and plan our calls and such around them knowing we are going to enter an area of no reception, such as on Rt 302 east of Wells River, VT to Littleton, NH, or around the Thetford to Norwich, VT section of I-91, etc (just two of hundreds of examples within normal driving distances of my house).

But in other news, while GPS is a good example of a gov/defense system that works pretty damn well, just because it's a gov/DOD system doesn't mean much in and of itself. There are lots of multi-billion dollar government systems, defense and other, that don't work as completely "as advertised" and some don't work at all. GPS is likely one of the shining stars, and likely not the norm.

In the end, you still need to be smarter than your phone, though it's becoming increasingly difficult...

[Wise Old Owl]

There we can agree... and that does make sense after looking at the map and you proved the point that the service signals are overlaping boundries.

[Bronk]

Ideally, automatically transmitting your GPS info with the 911 call and/or triangularization works to id your location, route the call to the proper 911 operator, etc, but the PSAP and ALI stuff doesn't work ideally - at least it doesn't up here. First, you're lucky to have one tower in range, and there are many areas where even a good GPS can't get a lock on satellites, so my guess would be that a phone's GPS has the same issues. I'm thinking that info simply isn't always available and that there are "holes" in the overall system as well.

Believe it or not, there are many rural areas that do not even have 911 yet. And there are MANY, MANY places where the 911 PSAP does not have the technology to trace GPS coordinates (often referred to as Phase II 911). Where this technology is available, it doesn't always work. And when it does work, its not 100% accurate. Best case scenario is you're going to be able to plot somebody's location within 100 yards. Many rural areas are just now getting Phase II. Rural areas do not have the funding that big cities do, and they will not have the latest technology...and it is rural areas where we hike.

DO NOT ASSUME THAT JUST BECAUSE YOUR CELL PHONE HAS SOME KIND OF GPS CAPABILTIY THAT YOUR 911 OPERATOR WILL BE ABLE TO ACCESS THIS INFORMATION. IN MANY CASES THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO. When you dial 911 you need to be prepared to tell the operator where you are.