Anatomy Of A SAR Mission

That Others May Live!
(Motto of the National SAR School)

I spent a dozen years in Search and Rescue (SAR) in New Mexico, from 1981 til 1993. Even though I did many things, my primary specialties were communications and downed-aircraft location. During that time, I worked over two-hundred SAR missions, drove thousands of miles, criss-crossing the state, spent thousands of dollars on equipment and supplies, and spent countless hours on the road and in the field. Long-days and sleepless-nights were the norm, rather than the exception.

Before I tell you about one particularly-memorable mission I worked, we will look at what happens to get the ball rolling. Note that this information is specific to New Mexico, where I was, and as far as I know, it is still valid today. Because the New Mexico State Police is constitutionally-tasked with performing Search and Rescue, everything begins at the State Police District Headquarters in the district where the mission is located. Resources can be called in from anywhere in the state.

How it all begins…
Mission Initiator (MI): A specially-trained State Police Officer who has volunteered to perform that function and work with SAR coordinators and teams. Being an MI is in addition to the Officer’s normal NMSP duties.

Field Coordinator (FC): A specially-trained SAR member who has been trained in SAR mission management. FC’s and MI’s receive the same training, except that FC’s also undergo a year of OJT under other experienced FC’s. FC’s are volunteers, as are all SAR team members in New Mexico.

When the call comes into a District Headquarters, the on-duty MI is notified. The MI then requests that District call an on-call FC. Once the FC gets the details and assesses the situation, they start calling for resources, which usually begin with a communications and logistics team, if one is available. Other specialized-resources are called as-needed.

When things really got sticky, the FC was also able to call for search-assistance from the State Police chopper, if it was available, and when rescues got technical, Air Force Para-rescue resources, which trained at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque.

Downed-aircraft missions…
I lost track of how many downed-aircraft missions I worked, but I was credited with three “finds“, one “save“, and two false-alarm “finds“, but none stands out in my mind more than that dark night in 1985, when we witnessed a miracle. Against all odds, the pilot survived an unsurvivable crash. That pilot was Mike Ryan, the famous stunt-driver and racer of anything that moves.

Mike was en-route back to California from the AOPA fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin when his plane dropped out of the sky into a deep canyon, southwest of Grants, New Mexico. As he came over the rim of the canyon, the sky dropped-out under him, plunking him unceremoniously in the bottom of the canyon. That we were able to find him – alive, and get him transported safely to a hospital was a miracle.

We rarely know enough about the people we search for and find to track them down later to see how they are doing, but Mike Ryan has a very-public internet-presence, so he was easy to find. The following is from a message I sent him a few months ago. I haven’t received any kind of response, so it is likely a painful-chapter in his life that he would rather not remember.

There were things I had to do, places I went, and things I saw while I was in SAR, that I would rather forget, but can’t – things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. That is part and parcel of what it means to be a “sheep dog“. Is it any wonder that many First Responders suffer from PTSD?

We all have painful chapters in our lives that we would rather forget or sweep under the carpet, but those are often the very things that have molded us into who we are today. Everyone LOVES to remember the “cherries“, but we HATE to remember the “pits“.

How We Found You…

Have you ever wondered how we found you in that God-forsaken canyon in New Mexico in 1985? Have you ever wondered why it took SO long for us to find you after you crashed? Wonder no more. I was there. My partner and I were the first two SAR team members to find and get to you at 0200 that morning. We were not the whole story, but we were part of it, and this is how you were found and rescued from that canyon. You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you.

I was reminiscing a few days ago about some of the “good-times” I had had in my life, trying to take my mind off all the crap that has happened in the last few years. I remember that you survived your crash because I had read you article in Reader’s Digest a few months later, so I decided to see what I could find about the crash, and if I could find the article. I didn’t find the article, but I found your website, mikeryanmotorsports.com, where you mentioned the crash in your bio. I sent you a message on your Facebook page, but then I noticed that it hadn’t been updated in over a year.

You were a sight for sore-eyes. You were a miracle, a rare survivor of the many plane crashes in New Mexico. During the twelve years I was in SAR, I also worked several fatal plane crashes. By 1985, when you went down, the NELT Team had developed and honed our skills and technology in radio-direction-finding to a fine science. We had formed in 1982 to fill the void in the SAR capability in New Mexico for finding aircraft crashes, and set the gold-standard for the rest of the nation to follow in aircraft-crash SAR.

Your rescue really was two miracles; that you survived, and that your ELT survived. Most of the time, if we found the plane’s ELT, it was smashed almost beyond-recognition. Yours still worked, and it was the key to us finding you.

The SARSAT program was still in its infancy in 1985, so there were only a few satellites in orbit and operating by then, which mean that we only got a satellite “hit” every four to five hours. By the time we got a decent “fix” from satellite data, you had already been down for close to twelve hours.

The next step in locating you was launching a CAP search aircraft from Albuquerque which was equipped with the necessary radio-receiver. Because it was already dark by then, they were not able to spot anything visually, so all they could do was give us approximate coordinates. Once the CAP aircraft had localized your approximate location, ground resources were dispatched from Albuquerque, Socorro and Los Alamos, equipped with special RDF equipment.

I was a member of that NELT Team. When we briefed in base-camp, we were divided up into two-person teams, and each team was given a sector to search. We didn’t have enough people for every team to have two members, so the New Mexico State Police Officer (MI) who was working with us volunteered to go with me.

As we drove the roads in our sector, I was listening to my ELT receiver and watching the signal-strength meter. It took us a while to get to the right spot on the road, but when the signal-strength meter pegged-out, I knew it was time for boots on the ground. There was a gate across the trail so we couldn’t drive in. We had to walk in. You weren’t very far from the road, maybe a quarter-mile, so it didn’t take long for us to get to you.

We were amazed that, by the time we got there, you had managed to extricate yourself from the wreckage, get a sleeping bag out of the baggage compartment and unroll it to lay on, and got the ELT out of its bracket, activate it, and place it on top of the wreckage, AND, you still had a sense of humor. I remember that you said something to the effect of “The scenery is beautiful, but the runway was a bit short.”

As soon as we knew that you were alive and safe, we vectored in additional resources to affect the actual rescue and transport you to the hospital. They put you into a Stokes litter and evacuated you from the area. By that time, the gate had been unlocked so the rescue team was able to bring a 4X4 pickup in to transport you to where they could meet the ambulance. That was the last I heard about your rescue until I read your article.

I have often wondered whether you ever recovered your plane from that canyon, and whether you were able to rebuild it? Did you get any good pictures of the area and the wreckage? I have never gone back there, and wouldn’t even know where to start looking. I worked over two-hundred SAR missions in that dozen years, so lots of details never got recorded in my memory-banks.

I don’t know whether you have been given this information before, but it you haven’t, I thought you might be interested in getting the pictured laid-out for you. That is my sole purpose in contacting you, not to gain any public-recognition.

Other missions…
Downed-aircraft missions were only a small fraction of the missions I worked during those years. They were usually the messiest, but were not the most critical. We we got a report of a missing child, we pulled out ALL the stops. One missing-child mission went for three days, and we even called in the National Guard to assist us in our search. It was in rough country just southeast of Gallup, New Mexico, and even though the weather was fairly decent, it was country that could even swallow-up an adult. We had over a hundred-thousand acres to search. He was found, safe and sound, mid-afternoon of the third day since he went missing.

Once in a great while, we had a “bastard” search, where the “missing-person” would turn-up in a local motel, safe and sound. Their spouse usually wasn’t too happy with that outcome. I worked one suicide in that twelve years. The young man had disposed of all of his belongings except for the clothes he was wearing, written a suicide-note, parked his car at a trail-head, and walked about a quarter-mile up the trail, before shedding all his clothes, putting them in a neat pile, and putting a plastic bag over his head with some kind of toxic-liquid. That was how searchers found him, buck-naked, and dead as a rock. That was a body-recovery mission, so there was not a “happy-ending”. That was one for the Medical Examiner.

We never closed-out a mission without some kind of resolution, either positive or negative. We did “suspend” a mission if the person wasn’t found in a reasonable period of time, but one person was found, alive, over two weeks after we suspended that mission, so we never said “never”. He was found on a rarely-used trail by two Volunteer Forest Service trail-patrollers. One tended him as best they could, while the other walked out to get help. We were glad to be able to send him to the hospital to recover, because dehydration and exposure had almost killed him, not to mention his other injuries.

Final thoughts…
If you have ever wondered what happens when a “missing-person” report comes in, this is typical of what happens in New Mexico, where Search and Rescue is highly-organized and well-managed. Otherwise, each jurisdiction has its own policies and procedures, and its own resources which are geared to the unique needs of the area. Colorado and Alaska also have highly-organized SAR response networks.

I hope this gives you some perspective on what happens when you dial 9-1-1 and report that your loved-one is missing. We are out there so you don’t have to be.

Steve McFarland – NMSAR 555
Graduate: National SAR School (USCG/USAF)
Team-leader: NM SAR Support Team (NMSARS)
Member: National ELT Location Team (NELT)
Assistant Director of Communications: NM Wing Civil Air Patrol (NMCAP)