{"id":8296,"date":"2012-05-12T06:33:23","date_gmt":"2012-05-12T13:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/?p=8296"},"modified":"2012-05-12T06:33:23","modified_gmt":"2012-05-12T13:33:23","slug":"sierra-madre-search-and-rescue-anza-borrego-search-follow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/?p=8296","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Madre Search and Rescue – Anza Borrego Search Follow-up"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Art Fortini briefing rescuers before entering the cave. Photo courtesy SMSR, click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Posted 5\/12\/12 –<\/em> People often wonder about the details of emergencies and how what appears to be alternatively complete chaos or inactivity results in anything being accomplished.\u00a0\u00a0 Like many emergencies, search and rescue operations are exercises in problem solving in often difficult circumstances.\u00a0 Many people are familiar with the more typical missing or injured hiker incident at Chantry Flats.\u00a0 This is a bit of insight into a more unusual operation, the recent body recovery in one of the Arroyo Tapiado mud caves in Anza-Borrego State Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Guillermo Pino\u2019s body had been located at the bottom of a narrow, 30\u2019 deep pit in one of the Arroyo Tapiado mud caves.\u00a0 As a result of having participated in search efforts in April, rescuers were familiar with the challenges that would be faced.\u00a0 Art Fortini of Sierra Madre Search and Rescue was tasked with leading the underground rescue effort last Tuesday.\u00a0\u00a0 Joining him were two additional members of the Sierra Madre team along with members of the Montrose Search and Rescue Team and the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department\u2019s Emergency Services Detail (ESD).\u00a0 Years of collective experience and training were immediately put to use assessing the situation to weigh the risks of any recovery.\u00a0 With those risks in mind, and armed with information gathered during the previous day\u2019s efforts by the San Bernardino Cave Rescue Team, rescuers assembled outside the cave and formulated a set of primary and alternative plans to remove Guillermo\u2019s body from the crevice in which it was wedged.<\/p>\n

Plan-A was to quarry away the floor of a small side passage to a depth of roughly 8 feet, shore up the walls, and access Guillermo from the side.\u00a0 The crevice was extremely narrow. Fortini said, “I’m going to say only 10 inches wide at the top, and it bells out to 18 inches further down, but that’s not very much room.”<\/p>\n

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Jon Pedder and Art Fortini setting up a rope access system used to lower rescuers down the fissure into which Guillermo had fallen. Photo courtesy of SMSR, click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

While work was underway to implement Plan-A, another of the Sierra Madre rescuers, Barbara Fortini, heard noises in the ceiling at a level below the side passage.\u00a0\u00a0 She indicated that there were two ceiling \u201cleads\u201d, a passage that has not been explored, from which the noise was coming.\u00a0 Rescuers rappelled down to the lower level to assess the 2 climbs.\u00a0 Art reported, \u201cThe first lead was rather dicey, but I managed to get up, squirm through a tight upward angling passage, into a tighter horizontal passage, and poke my head around a corner.\u00a0 I saw Guillermo\u2019s feet about a yard away through a 6\u201d wide crack.\u201d\u00a0 Checking the other lead he found that the climb was easier, and it too enabled me to see Guillermo\u2019s feet through an even narrower constriction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rescuers now had 3 options for accessing him.\u00a0 \u201cWhen word got to the surface that we now had several options for recovering Guillermo, the mood in the CP underwent a palpable change from near hopelessness to guarded optimism.\u201d, reported Fortini.<\/p>\n

Lumber was brought into the cave to create a safe working platform for accessing and digging in the first ceiling lead.\u00a0 The smallest team member widened the initial passage allowing SMSR\u2019s Jon Pedder to enter the passage and continue the effort.\u00a0 Rescuers ascended their ropes approximately 25\u2019 back up to the upper level (the Plan-A location) and started digging there as well.\u00a0 Eventually, rescuers were digging at all three locations.\u00a0 Thanks to the convoluted, 3-dimensinal nature of the cave, rescuers could work without risk of dropping debris on each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of the digging to this point was done with simple hand tools, which minimized vibration and risk to the rescuers.\u00a0 The walls of the two ceiling leads were rock rather than the easily-removed siltstone.\u00a0 Like many aspects of search and rescue, this proved to be a two-edged sword: it made the passage widening efforts significantly slower, but it also eliminated the need to install shoring.\u00a0 Work to widen the ceiling leads took several hours.<\/p>\n

Once the two ceiling leads were sufficiently widened the medical examiner entered the cave to examine the scene.\u00a0 \u201cWe then widened one of the ceiling excavations a bit more and used a rope system to lower Guillermo\u2019s body to the lower level of the cave.\u00a0 He was no longer trapped.\u201d, noted Fortini.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Guillermo was now free of the confines of the crevice and rescuers could begin the next phase of the recovery effort: moving him through several hundred feet of tight, serpentine passage filled with many, many hairpin turns.\u00a0 It took roughly 2 hours to get Guillermo out of the cave by literally moving him one or two feet at a time.\u00a0 By about 8:30 pm, Guillermo Pino\u2019s body was brought out of the cave.<\/p>\n

The recovery effort took roughly 12 hours, with 10 rescuers working in the cave the entire time.\u00a0 Additional search and rescue, State Park, and San Diego Sheriff\u2019s Department resources provided support from the surface.\u00a0 Fortini said, “I would say this is probably the most technically challenging rescue I’ve been on with the mine rescue team.\u00a0 Being able to bring closure to the family is something that makes all of us feel good.”<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County Sheriff Department\u2019s Underground Search and Rescue Team is a composite team made up of members of the Sierra Madre, Montrose, Antelope Valley, and Malibu search and rescue teams.\u00a0 The group is one of only a few certified mine rescue units in the state.\u00a0 Team members serve as civilian volunteers or Reserve Deputies on their respective teams.\u00a0 The search and rescue teams are specialized resources that can be called upon to respond to incidents anywhere in the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted 5\/12\/12 – People often wonder about the details of emergencies and how what appears to be alternatively complete chaos or inactivity results in anything being accomplished.\u00a0\u00a0 Like many emergencies, search and rescue operations are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[41,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8296"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sierramadrenews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}