Darcy Harbaugh and Scully
Ana Franklin and Sampson
Janet Geist and Jester
North Alabama Search Dog Association
Deep Water Drowning
Situation:
A 42-year-old man and his 12 year old son were riding in a cigarette
boat when the cigarette boat collapsed in on itself. No collision,
simply structurally failed. Both father and son were thrown from the
boat, son was recovered alive west of the accident location.
Son was wearing life vest, father was not.
Search overall: the current pulls from right to left on the map. This location is about a mile upstream of Smith Lake Dam.
Smith lake is a damned lake, in this area approximately 200 feet
deep. Because it's flooded, the last 80-100 feet is drowned
standing timber. The water had been pulled at least once
before we worked the problem. Typically very dangerous for
divers both because of the depth and because of the timber.
Local divers could not do the depth. The local Marine Police called
in the State Police Dive team, who have an automated underwater
camera. This equipment successfully located the body in an
area where the dogs had alerted.. Divers were sent to recover
after it was located.
Our portion:
Map: the white dots are where we took GPS readings off the
dogs. The 195 feet marker has an "X", which
is the final location of the body.
We were called Tuesday night and worked the problem on Wednesday.
The local rescue squad had marked, with buoys, where the son and
passengers in the other boat said 1) the wreck occurred and 2) where
they had last seen the father. These two buoys were only 50 or
60 feet apart, so we took one GPS reading between the two to use as
a marker.
Weather, sunny about 80, strong wind from the west. Wind was gusty
but steady all day. Worked Sampson with wind first, getting
the indication #1 as interest, and successive indications
along the wind direction. As he came by the wreck markers, he
gave a significant alert (dig/down) at Sampson #2.
Originally worked Scully from right to left, starting well
downstream from the crash site and Sampson #2. Got interest
and whining/jumping in but nothing particularly concrete.
Seemed to get a lot of interest along the south/east shoreline,
wrote it up to the wind blowing all scent that direction and
collecting. Finally turned her back toward the wreck site and
cut across the water west of the wreck site. Did two more passes in
this area, getting Scully #13, then circling around again and
getting Scully #14. Both were concrete solid bark alerts
(frustrated ones actually since I wasn't handing over the toy).
Then had Jester work. He showed less interest were Scully
alerted but alerted along the airscent path.
Our at-the-time-analysis:
I felt that Scully was the more likely of the dogs to not have hit
airscent but more likely to have worked and alerted on current scent
(both her typical working pattern and the fact that we essentially
worked against the wind). Ana felt Sampsons initial interest
were definitely airscent, as he kept giving interest along a
particular wind direction line, which then disappeared until he gave
his full alert. She felt the last alert was more accurate to
actual body location. Janet felt Jesters alert was definitely
airscent as he has a tendency to not work close to the water.
For the local rescue squad we explained what we thought was going on
then marked Scully #13 and Sampson #2 with buoys. We explained
we thought that general line was the bottom edge of where we thought
he was and that if they made a triangle between those buoys and
their wreck site he was most likely somewhere in the triangle, and
probably closer to our buoys than the wreck site. Where they found
him: On the map, he was located just north east of Scully #14,
at approximately 200 feet down.
Things we learned:
We did not expect our alerts to be as close as they were to the
body, mostly because of the current and wind running in opposite
directions and because the wind was so strong and gusty. We expected
that because of the depth, our alerts would be a little further
downstream of him (current wise) than we were. Of all the
conditions, the depth seemed to have the smallest effect.
Combining our handlers' knowledge of the way their dogs work
really helped us pull this picture together. Sampson and
Scully have the most experience on water, so we trusted them to be a
little closer to the body than Jester, who is a notorious airscenter.
With the conditions (gusty wind and depth) I am still a bit
surprised that all 3 dogs gave solid alerts (not just body
language). Scully in particular barked solidly in each of the
two marked locations, finally howled in frustration and went over to
the pack where she knew her toy was.
MAP
K-9
Specialty Search Associates
