Well, the Israeli rescue team from FIRST did go to Peru. Most of them left yesterday, and others are leaving tonight. There was room on the team for me, but unfortunately the return date was too risky and posed a conflict with a big project I’m working on.
A friend and paramedic from my SAR team is taking off in about 20 minutes to go there. I hope he brings back some good pictures and interesting stories.
Posted in SAR
Posted in SAR
This is going to be tight. I still don’t know if I’m joining the rescue team going to Peru. I hope to find out midday tomorrow, and they’re leaving as early as tomorrow evening. My biggest issue is that I need to clear a change in a deadline at work with a customer who won’t arrive until the morning to see the email…and may not ready it right away either. Given that, it is probably not going to happen, but there is still a chance. My bag is half-packed.
Posted in SAR
I’ve been working on the training exercise for my SAR team for the past three weeks. It’s been a ton of work, and my schedule at the office hasn’t exactly made it easy either. On Friday morning I needed to work with someone to 
translate nearly 30 “clues” before we could go print them off and disperse them in the desert.
Rather than give out a whole ton of waypoints from the start, I made a game out of it. The main goal of the training was to work on azimuth & distance reading and navigation with a map and compass. Therefore, the first “clue” was a slip of paper that gave simply the azimuth & distance to the first waypoint. From there, it became challenging. They were given riddles or quizzes at each point. I borrowed some from a GMAT study guide, where the answer to a problem gave them a number. In some cases I used people’s ages or other references, and turned the resulting number into the next azimuth. It was also a good opportunity to ask some important high angle rope rescue safety facts.
After the nav training, we had a basic high angle lower & raise exercise. Everyone was very happy with the whole day. As an extra bonus, the turnout was exceptionally high. Kudos to the new recruits.
It turns out that Israel may be sending a small medical team to Peru, and I find out tomorrow if they will ask me to come. It presents a big issue with a project I’m working on at the office, but I think the potential customer will be flexible given the circumstances.
Posted in SAR
My day started off more or less as planned, and then went haywire. I left the house at 11, after transferring the waypoints to my GPS so that I wouldn’t need to take my laptop. I chose to leave the laptop in the end and to turn this into an opportunity for a trail run, carrying only the GPS and water.
I finished zipping back and forth between all of the waypoints for the nav training within about 2 hours, and was literally just about to touch my car when my phone beeped with a rescue. CRAP! RUN!
Ok…emergency light on the roof, I’m trying to drive on a winding road at the same time as I let my SAR team know that I’m coming from the other direction, but of course, I’m in an area with no reception. Keep trying… Now on top of that, I’d told Ana I was going on a run/hike and to expect me to check in within 3 hours. Knowing that if I don’t tell her now I was ok before I go on the rescue, she’ll call it in, I had to get a hold of her. As luck would have it, she was asleep and someone else was using her phone who simply refused to answer the call waiting. DOH! For 10 mins I had to keep trying both numbers until finally I succeeded.
Now, I ditched my car at an intersection of 2 roads near Arad, knowing that this was rather risky. I didn’t have an alternative, so I did the best I could. I parked facing traffic, right up by the road with my emergency light in the window. It would take a lot of guts for someone to steal it in those conditions.
Rescue #1: Two mountain bikers left Arad with about 2L of water, no map, and no general idea where they were going. They could only tell us they were on a green trail, near a burned out car. Fortunately, there is only one such location. It was about 15km of desert driving to get there, so it took us some time. One was moderately dehydrated, but his vitals were fine and we loaded them up into the car after they’d had a chance to drink water.
Rescue #2: We had just hit the road with the mountain bikers still in our jeeps when Ein Gedi’s rescue team called us in to help search for a missing 57-year-old man. We dropped the cyclists off at Kfar HaNokdim and took off again to take a high point over Nahal Zeilim and to drop down in on foot. We had just set off to join them when they found the missing hiker. Unfortunately, he was no longer alive.
Got home at 6pm. Late lunch. Have to take off now to meet friends at 10pm in Hertzliya Pituach. Rush…rush….
Technorati Tags: sar, rescue, search&rescue, israel, arad, mtb
Today really didn’t turn out as planned. Last night’s work with the new members of the SAR team ran quite late, and then I sat with our unit commander at his place for a while to talk about the training exercise I need to plan for next week. By the time I got home, had dinner and got settled in, it was late enough to completely rule out getting up at 6am for the lecture.
I stuck around Arad doing the requisite grocery shopping, etc. By the time I got home, I was ready to relax. Work caught up with me. For about the next 6-7 hours, I spent the time dealing with a massive influx of emails in the past 24 hours as well as some serious logistical issues related to the shipping of equipment to a new and very important customer.
The good news is that along the way I pulled up Google Earth and started to drop plots in for the training next weekend. I had a 1:50 topo map for reference, but since I am planning an orienteering exercise in about a 2-3 sq km area, the level of detail in GE is just so much more useful. I’ve found about a dozen good drops for flags, and I’ll scout the area on foot tomorrow just to confirm. I will probably be a real idiot and take my laptop with me. If the HSDPA card has reception, it will be a bit fun to confirm my location against my plots today. Perhaps my next laptop will be a Toughbook Tablet.
The area doesn’t really have any 4×4 trails, so there isn’t much of a difference between taking my car and one of our 4×4s.
I’ll need to get out early so I can manage to get up to Hertzliya for 8pm to meet friends.
Posted in SAR
This is a really cool video that is making the rounds.
My last “safari” in Kenya a couple of weeks ago was in a park so small, it felt almost like a staged event. The buffalo there seemed so tame.
Posted in Africa
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