Saturday, November 21, 2015

Hypo Wrap with a FLIR?

Another great session Thursday evening.  Earlier in the night we experimented with critical spacing and came up with some interesting thoughts.   We also passed around the FLIR towards the last portion of our training and made some new observations.

We met at the south end of Ave K at the old Sanatorium site in Saskatoon.  An interesting mix of terrain. Although the bulk of our session was held in what might be considered typical open prairie, we also spent a considerable portion of our session in dense brush.

Our team started by attempting to determine the critical separation based on a dark coloured ladies shoe.   By dropping the shoe down on the ground and gradually walking away from it we established the approximate spacing.  So far so good ... Search basics 101!  Things gradually got more interesting.

After forming our search line a team member in my group tossed the shoe far into the distance while our backs were turned.  We designated a team leader and began to slowly march forward at what would be considered a TYPE 2 search.

We experimented with two different colours of light.  Red did not seem to be nearly as effective as the white light.  We decided to use white lights on our headlamps along with our flashlights for the search.

It was apparent that the probability of detection significantly increased with light intensity.  That would seem logical, but an interesting question came to mind.  If the four of us on a search line are all using flashlights with large differing outputs should that influence the critical spacing?  In other words,  If one of us was carrying an extremely bright light should there be a large gap at that point in the line?  If one can achieve the same Probability Of Detection but cover a larger gap because of the intensity of light, is this appropriate?   A conversation took place. We ended up deciding that we would all  keep the exact same critical spacing for now.  I still wonder if this is the most effective thing to do?

Later that night we passed around the FLIR.  We started by looking at the range of this unit and it does present a new way of searching.  After some simple tests,  it was decided that a particular colour  motif (the FLIRs thermal representation) of defining temperature worked best on a setting called iron.  I am sure opinions will vary as we all process these things differently.  It did seem to work well for me though.

After finishing with the range tests, we decided to send a few members into the woods with a five minute head start.  What we found was that the tool still needs some refining to figure out the most useful way it could be used in a search.  Its worth mentioning that Rebecca pointed out that perhaps by placing the FLIR in advance of a search team it might significantly increase the POD.  The unit seems to cover the same area as a four person team based on prior experiments.  Its by no means perfect, but with a little more thought I think we may be able to successfully integrate this into our operation and add to our overall efficiency.

 As it got later into the night,  two teams were tasked with applying hypothermia wraps independently on separate people.  We used the FLIR to inspect the completed wraps to look for heat loss.  It would seem that this is a very good tool for this purpose.  A large difference was noted between the two different groups.   A quick scan of each wrap immediately showed issues which could have been quickly remedied.

This night provided many lessons for all of us.  The value of regular training continues to refine and influence our methodology.


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