*** The Little Plastic Box ***

From: Mike Larish <bcsar@sierra.net>
To: sar-l-d@islandnet.com
Subject: SAR Story

The following is a story written by one of our members a few years back...
Just figured I'd share it with the net...

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It's a cold, rainy, winter's night. It's 12:30 AM and you've finally dozed
off when a little plastic box, only a few inches long by a couple inches
wide, containing electronics and a speaker starts beeping loudly and
insistently. Shortly after this sudden wake-up call, a voice booms from
the little box, "Search & Rescue All-Call. Search & Rescue All-Call.
Vehicle over the edge. Highway 70, Feather River Canyon, 2 miles east of
Pulga Bridge. At least one subject ejected from the car into the water."
Instantly, adrenaline is coursing through your veins. A rescue!

Before you even realize what you are doing, you are throwing your field
uniform on, hastily tying your boots and running out the door. "S&R
Control, 375 is enroute to Headquarters!," is announced over the radio by
you as you try to navigate your way to the freeway. You are the closest
to the station tonight so it falls upon you to pick up the rescue rig and
equipment. When you arrive at the Search & Rescue Station, you quickly
throw open the bay doors and ready the rescue rig for response. You grab
your personal gear and load it onto the rescue rig as well. All the while,
the clock is ticking down and you know that precious time is slipping by
for the poor victims you are attempting to reach. "S&R Control, 375 is
enroute in Rescue I, code 3." With that pronouncement, you reach down and
flip on the lights and siren. The wind-whipped rain splatters down on the
windshield while the red and blue rotating lights on your roof throw an
eerie glow across the road in front of you. The little traffic that is on
the road at this hour quickly pulls over after hearing the blare of the
siren and seeing the critical insistence of the emergency lights. As you
rush by, their thoughts are a mix of thankfulness that they aren't
involved in whatever emergency is demanding such a response and dull
sense of wonder and curiosity on what it must be like to be involved with
an emergency service profession, especially on a night like this.

When you finally arrive on scene, you find yourself in the midst of
controlled pandemonium. The county fire department and California
Department of Forestry are already on-scene attempting to reach the
victims and get the operation going. Rescuers are running about trying to
get equipment from rigs, lighting set up and rope rescue systems put
together. You hear shouts of, "Grab the 5-to-1 Pre-Rig from Rescue I,"
and "We need Swift Water Rescue Techs and DART divers suited up and read
to go down." Even with the spotlights and portable lighting systems, the
scene around you is surreal and unfathomable. Beyond the road, in the
depths of the canyon below, darkness prevails and presses in all around
with only the few handheld flashlights of the rescuers below piercing the
gloom.

Your commanding officer instructs you to get suited up, get the gear you
need and rappel down to the vehicle which is sitting precipitously on the
edge of the raging river. Fear begins to creep in on your consciousness.
Not enough to stop you from what you must do but enough to increase the
adrenaline already flowing through your veins; enough to sit on the edge
of your thoughts to make you realize that what you are doing is dangerous.
Along with the fear though comes the reassurance and confidence that hours
and hours of continuous training instills in you. You've been trained for
this. You've done this before, albeit, maybe not quite in these
conditions. Your training takes over and your mind goes over the routine.
Safety. Helmet. Light. Wetsuit. Personal Flotation Device. Rope Throwbag.
Latex Gloves. Rappel gloves. Rappel harness is tight and secure. Take the
rope, put a bite up through the Rescue 8-plate and down over the tail.
Attach the 8-plate to the caribiner on your harness. Lock the caribiner.
The first few steps over the edge are always the worst, especially at
night. There. You've gotten over the edge. Deep breath. Now, slow and
methodical rappel down.

The rain hasn't let up. You are soaked but you don't notice it in the
wetsuit. You finally reach the bottom after what seems like an eternity
on the cliff. After removing yourself from the rappel line, you head over
to the small group of rescuers clustered around the vehicle. The vehicle
itself looks like it's been through a wrecking yard. There isn't much left
of the front end after it's trip down the cliff. The front window is
smashed out, presumably by a human projectile. You ask the rescuer nearest
you, "How many?" She answers in a monotone voice, "Two in the car, a
female adult and a little boy, and apparently a male adult in the water."
Your mind reels as you hear a cry of pain come from a tiny, frightened,
high pitched voice. "I want my daddy!" the boy screams. In order to
protect itself mentally and emotionally, your mind shuts off the emotional
and empathic part of itself. It must if you are to perform your duties.
There will be time enough to deal with that side later. And to cry if
need be.

Once again, your training asserts itself. Stabilize the victims. Extract
the victims from the vehicle. Package the victims for the long, dangerous
trip up the cliff. As time ticks by, you find that you and the team of
rescuers are doing just that. The woman is extricated from the car,
packaged into a stokes litter and started up the cliff. Her injuries were
much more serious than the boy. The boy's cries have subsided into
whimpers of pain and fear. All the rescuers take turns talking to him,
trying to keep him calm as they wait for the rope to come back down and
the raising operation to start again.

Finally, it's the boy's turn to be pulled and guided up the cliff by
these wraiths of the night. You attach your stokes strap onto the litter
and cinch down your rappel harness as tight as it will go. The rescuer
next to you does the same as you both say a silent prayer that everything
goes well. "Start Haul, slowly," you send across the radio on your chest.
The rope in front of you loses it's slack and begins to pull you up the
side of the cliff. At the same time, you try to keep your feet under you
and guide the stokes up the narrow defile. The cliff isn't perfectly
vertical so the weight of the stokes and the boy presses down on you. The
rain, coming even harder, almost blinds you. You hear the rope team on the
top say across the radio, "Stopping haul. Resetting rope system." You
wait, hanging suspended forty feet up a cliff, with a small boy in the
stokes beside you in the middle of the night. Eternity. Finally, you hear
those welcome words, "Ready for haul." "Start Haul" returns. Again, the
slow, arduous trip up the cliff begins. Forty Feet. Twenty feet. Ten feet.
Five feet. The welcome sight of hands reaching out from waiting rescuers
enters your view. You, the rescuer next to you and the boy in the stokes
are pulled the last few feet up the cliff. Once on top, you quickly try
and unattach yourself from the stokes so they can transport the victim to
the waiting ambulance.

You see a large bumper on one of the fire engines sitting open. You slump
down, relieved that you are safe and on solid ground rather than
suspended in time and space. You watch as the paramedics load the small
boy in the ambulance and drive away, red lights flashing in the pre-dawn
sky.

As the ambulance passes out of sight around the corner, you see a very
unwelcome sight of a body bag being carried down the road by a group of
rescuers. The missing father. Found drowned, caught on a snag, several
hundred yards down stream. Your mind is having a harder time staying
detached. It's been a long rescue.

After pulling up the remaining rescuers from the canyon below and packing
up the gear, you start for home and the sleep you so desperately need but
aren't sure you'll get. It's a long way home. Quiet. Too quiet. Your
mind finally slips out of "automatic" and back to it's normal self and
you start feeling and seeing everything emotionally. It's hard. A family
devastated. A young boy now without a father. A wife without a husband.
It's hard. Adding to the emotional turmoil is the fact that your body is
coming down off of an adrenaline high, leaving you thoroughly exhausted
and weak and feeling utterly drained.

You finally get back to the station, clean up the rescue rig and put away
the equipment. Now. Finally. You can go home. Home. After a long shower,
you climb into bed hoping for a few hours sleep without dreams or
nightmares before you have to get up to go to work. And of course,
there's always that little plastic box, a few inches long by a couple of
inches wide, containing electronics and a speaker, that sits by the head
of your bed. You know that it will go off again. It's just a matter of
when. It's just a matter of hearing those booming words blaring out from
the speaker, "Search & Rescue All-Call. Search & Rescue All-Call..."

--
Michael Larish  aka Mike     Butte Co.Sheriff Search & Rescue (Lt.Training)
nomad@ecst.csuchico.edu      Butte Co.Sheriff Communications Reserve (Sgt.)
SwiftWater Rescue Instructor Butte Co.Drowning Accident Rescue Team (DART)
EMT/Rescue Diver/Tech-Rescue Enloe Hospital, Trauma Services