*** Searching Techniques for a Deaf Person ***

A few techniques come to mind when searching for a deaf person.

The first technique is the Standard or Low Visibility grid search.
The POD tables in my paper "planning the Gridsearch' give the sweep
conditions for the visual detection of a human subject in forested
terrain. This paper is in the file GridPlan.doc in SARINFO's Planning
library.

The second method is one of attraction. Coloured ballons, fireworks,
flares, smoke etcerea, even a circling helicopter, may attract the
subjects attention and cause him/her to move towards the attracting
device. At night a search light or a large illuminated balloon may be
effective attractors.

The third method that might work is a flagged stringline, with markings
appropriate to the age of the subject. In essence this technique lays
stringlines across boundaries or natural travel routes that the subject
might intersect. On the string are frequent folded paper notices with a
direction of travel arrow. The notice would have a word, such as 'Exit',
'Help', 'Mummmy', or, for a child, a picture of a favourite item (pet,
teddy bear, ice cream cone  etc) beside the direction of travel arrow.
In theory the subject will follow the stringline to a safe location that
is patrolled by the searchers.A varient on this theme is to either use
very thin string that break seasily, or some small tag that would be
displaced off the string, if the subject walks into or through the string.
This would give an indicationof the location of any person or animal that
walked through the stringsince it was installed or last inspected.

A fourth technique that may be used is the 'track trap'. A smooth area
of ground is prepared, by brushing, raking etc, in a location that the
subject is likely to travel through eg, a pass, trail, natural route,
etcetera. This smoothened ground is periodically inspected for
footprints to see if the subject has walked through that area. To some
extent this can be used to help define a search area, although the
subject may have walked through the location of the trap track before it
was prepared.

Of course with all of the above rigourous confinement, including
roadblocks and trailblocks of the entire search area are also required.
This is especially if the subject is deaf and may not be aware of the
presence of the searchers.


Martin Colwell
Lions Bay Search & Rescue
sarinfo@mindlink.bc.ca

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