We had a call for a small plane down at 6:04 AM.
Caller was the pilot, calling from a cell phone, in the downed plane, which he reported as "somewhere to the south of the runway, in a pine forest"- no better location was available. The area is heavily wooded. There was a passenger in the plane as well.

Weather conditions were very foggy.

Arriving crews searched for the plane for about an hour, it was upside-down, located somewhere south of the air strip as indicated by the pilot. Extrication was fairly quick, and due to the mode of injury, both pilot and patient were transported to hospital by air. There were a few moments of difficulty getting the helicopter to the landing zone to to isolated heavy fog in the area.

During this incident, one of responding companies got an additional call, fortunately, command has requested a cover of their station at the onset of the plane down call, so that call was handled as well.

This was a relatively easy call, everyone worked well together, preplans and communications worked as needed.

Some learning lessons for others:

- Geolocation of cell phones is not practical in rural areas. Not only was locating the cell phone not possible for us, even if it was....

- GPS does not work on foggy days in a pine forest in a valley. That's why we have printed maps in all the trucks, and when you're looking in the woods for something...

- Topo Maps are a must-have.

- Local Area Tactical Communications are always better with point-to-point radio rather than repeater radios. Analog radios are MUCH better tactical communications tools than digital radios.


All in all, a good well managed call, a good outcome (well, I mean except for the plane), and a satisfying emergency services experience.

Good job. Much more fun to have survivors. I never had that luck with aircraft mishaps...

Well done!

Here's an article (they work fast) -
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-planecrash0613-cn,0,5101519.story?coll=all-news-hed

Just curious - was the plane not equipped with an emergency beacon like a PLB or the older beacon on 121.5Mhz? If it was, does your group have an ELT for the 121.5Mhz beacon?

Our S&R group has an ELT for the 121.5MHz beacon and recently did a field test out in the wilderness area (mountainous terrain). The signal jumped all over the place and would have led us down a canyon instead of towards the correct location up the mountain.

I figure a more recent PLB (with GPS) is a much better alternative, especially since the 121.5MHz beacon won't be picked up by satellites as of Feb 2009 (I think).

Justin

Good Job

Good Information

Thanks-
Pete

I'd like to know more about GPS not working.
Fog shouldn't interfere.
Pine trees will interfere to a certain extent.

Having the GPS antenna on the top side of an upside down aircraft certainly will interfere.

.... but what GPS was it that didn't work?

The one in the truck? Or the one in the plane?

I don't know, and no, we don't have an ELT, and I don't know where we'd find one. It's Fire/Rescue first, SAR is an incidental occasional need. I'm sure that SAR specialists would have been called in, the Chief of Station 49 (it was their call, we're station 47), is good about calling for help when needed.



I've never used one, I guess all radio systems have problems of some kind.




GPS wasn't really working where we were looking. Heavy tree cover, not a good angle for sky view. I have a Garmin GPS 60C and it's pretty darn good, and it could not hold even a 2D lock. I think that the feet on the ground approach was a good call and it worked well. If there was a trauma injury, it would have been not so good, but given the people and area to search, command did it right.

Any handheld radio that can be tuned to 121.5 MHz can be useful in finding an ELT if you start withing range. In CAP we often used either a Radioshack "Jetstream" radio or a handheld scanner.

You hold the radio upright against your chest and slowly rotate your body, noting the "null" in the signal as your body blocks the signal. Move in a direction opposite the null and repeat.

Yes, the signal can bounce off all kinds of things but eventually you'll find it. It does take practice.

P.S. This is what it sounds like:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/MAEL/ag/elt.wav

The GPS in my HAND (Garmin GPS 60C) and in my JEEP (Garmin Streetpilot 2620) and my backup GPS (Magellan Explorist 100) all would not hold a fix in the valleys.

Here's a scan of part of the area concerned:


Note the deep valleys, really more indentations in the land. You just can't see much sky, plus I've always found Pine Trees are pretty bad in terms of RF attenuation. I'd have 3D lock, then 2d lock, then I'd loose all but 2 satellites, then I'd get a lock again. It wasn't a big deal, we didn't need the GPS at all, there were so many people to just walk the area and we used cell phones and HT's to coordinate.

And as far as Fog - it most certainly DOES affect RF signals in my experience.