Rescuing hikers: how one park district is making the process easier

[BlackHatGuy]

The Bainbridge park district in Washington State is installing rescue locators that are coded with GPS coordinates. The information can help emergency responders find injured people in less time.

[Mark]

That makes me very very sad, just another step backwards for people not taking responsibility for themselves.

Any responsible person that spends time in the outdoors should be able to know their position, if they don’t then they should have a map and necessary skills to triangulate their position, failing that a GPS device that gives their position.

Who wants to explore the outdoors and see these horrible signs all over the place, it’s like painting by numbers but with hiking.

What really worries me though is that IF people start to rely on junk like this what will happen if the signs are damaged by the weather or vandals, what will people do then?

[Jeremy and Angela]

It occurs to me that the number of people able to “take responsibility” is a fixed amount, and that as such activities become more popular, that amount will be increasingly exceeded.  (Just a slightly different perspective.)  In either case, we must work with what we have.

What pains me more about this initiative is that it happened in a vacuum of knowledge; they invented their own locator system (a “bingo grid”?) when there is already a good system that covers the entire US (and world, for that matter).  They could have worked with a system that would have benefited users even after they left the park, but they didn’t.  Their printable maps (https://biparks.org/printable-maps/) also lack basic location information; it’s as if fundamental aspects of map usage are missing from their consciousness.

/end rant

-J

[Philip Tschersich]

I work with our local SAR volunteer organization, and already this fall we have gotten 3 calls from the State Troopers who have people on their cell phones in need of ‘rescue’. Somehow they have smartphones with cell service, but are incapable of using an app to either give their locations, or use an app to navigate at all. All have been ambulatory and within 1 mile of a road. I think the Troopers are turning into IT support and talking people through how to determine their locations on their phones or download google maps and walk themselves out.

[Jeremy and Angela]

Philip, I have two suggestions for you.

First, https://findmesar.com/ is going to be the easiest url to tell someone over the phone.  It will pop up the person’s location in nice big letters, and even has a map button as well.

Second, a better one for the rescuer might be http://yourlo.ca/tion (info at http://bluetoque.ca/products/yourlo-cation/).  I wouldn’t recommend trying to talk someone through typing in that url, but you can use it to send them a text and they will get a link they can click to send their coordinates back to you.

(A potential downside to either is there may be a phenomenon that blocks phone’s data connections for a few minutes after calling 911.)

-J

 

[Philip Tschersich]

FindMeSAR.com is f**king brilliant. :^)

[Kattt]

Since Switzerland experiences a large number of mountain  accidents resulting is rescues ( and many deaths) I was curious how the rescue system operates. I had heard of Rega my entire life but what I read was a bit of a  surprise.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rega_(air_rescue)

[Rex Sanders]

I’ve seen those location signs in other parks, and think they’re a great idea. They were added to existing sign posts at junctions, not sprinkled every 50 meters along the trail. And yes, they used their own, simple-to-read-over-a-phone location system — most people are not map coordinate geeks.

People have been hiking without maps, compasses, or any sense of direction, and getting lost, since well before smart phones came along. In theory and by regulation, 911 calls from cell phones should be easy to geolocate. In practice, 911 locations are bad or missing, and mostly getting worse:

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/84235/

At least with a sign and a cell phone that works, lost people can get found quickly, and that’s a good thing, for them and for search and rescue.

Someone who is lost is also under a lot of stress. They might have trouble reading and interpreting maps on a tiny screen, or reading out strange coordinates from a sign or an app or a web site they’ve never seen before.

And if they value privacy like me, and turn off location services, even findmesar.com can’t help much — though otherwise that seems like a good idea.

I’ve always wanted a phone function that would (1) Call 911, (2) Read out your GPS coordinates over the phone by voice when you push the big red button marked “Tell them where I am.”

Some 911 call centers accept text messages now. Maybe someone smart can combine GPS coordinates with 911 text messages.

— Rex

[Jeremy and Angela]

They might have trouble reading and interpreting maps on a tiny screen, or reading out strange coordinates from a sign or an app or a web site they’ve never seen before.

I get this, but watching people try to figure out how to use GPS effectively is a bit like watching Granny Clampett building a wood fire inside the electric oven.  There’s no need for maps on tiny screens except as a last resort, and no need for long, meaningless coordinates either.

The changes to the signs would be as simple as e.g. using “336 781” for the location, instead of the “GB36”.  Just two extra characters, but it gets you back to a standardized system that would match up with things like findmesar.com (for example), and the maps on the park brochures if you put a grid on them.

-J

[Nick Gatel]

As a society have lost our self-reliant skills. We have replaced those skills and personal accountability with itty-bitty screens; screens we just discard every couple of years and get a new one — thus we need the Darwin Awards.

[Mark]

As a society have lost our self-reliant skills. We have replaced those skills and personal accountability with itty-bitty screens; screens we just discard every couple of years and get a new one — thus we need the Darwin Awards.

Seems that as i get older we as a species spend more time, effort and money trying to stop stupid people doing stupid things, then when they do eventually do stupid things we throw a substantial amount of resources to helping them.

If that worked, if that saved lives i might be convinced it’d be worth it, seems to me that stupid people always seem to find a away to circumnavigate these preventative measure though.

Our minds are amazing things, they will adapt really easily, often without us even noticing.

As an example look at cars, back when i was younger we have tyres with little traction, most cars where rear wheel drive and we had no traction control or ABS.
We knew that if we got into trouble it was 100% up to our driving skills to get ourselves out of it, with no airbags and very little in the way of safety measures if we crashed, people drove with a LOT more concentration than they do these days.

Now we have cars that have traction control, stability control. ABS, lane swerve, auto headlights, auto windscreen wipers etc etc etc………….

In theory people should be a LOT safer, in reality people just drive faster, closer to the car in front, faster in bad conditions, cause they rely on all these electronic driver aids, plus they know if they crash their crumple zones, and 360° airbags will more than likely save their arses.

Not matter how safe we make something as a species we will push it further, the problem is, if for some reason we loose these safety nets in the future we will have lost the skills we need to bail ourselves out.

Using cars as an example again, put a 20 year old that’s been driving modern cars all their driving life into something like a early 90’s Porsche 911, they’ll likely not make it round the block if it’s a rainy day.

Fast forward a generation or 2 and drivers will likely not know how to switch on windscreen wipers or lights.

Already it’s astounding how many can’t change a wheel when they have a puncture, about 30% of those i’ve asked don’t know where the oil goes, even more worryingly they don’t know how to fill up their windscreen washer fluid tank, you can forget anyone knowing what a choke is and how to use it.

So people adapt to absorb risk, yet still seem to find new ways of inventing new risks (i.e. driving while on the phone or texting).

I think it’s better to put effort, money and time into training and teaching people, rather than making trails like a join the dots drawing.

[Ralph Burgess]

If that worked, if that saved lives i might be convinced it’d be worth it…
As an example look at cars…In theory people should be a LOT safer

United States, annual deaths per billion miles traveled:

1970 = 47
1980 = 34
1990 = 21
2000 = 16
2010 = 11

 

[Mark]

Ralph,

I would be grateful if you would keep my posts in context, cutting a pasting different words to form a quote that meets your needs isn’t really helpful.

Likewise posting a figure that’s been tailored to suit isn’t really helpful either.

In the early 90’s the USA was seeing around 40,000 road related deaths per year, in the 2015 it was around 35,000.

Granted there are more people on the roads, but then the average speeds are slower, law enforcement against things like drink driving, seat belts is stricter.

The point is not really about road safety or some arbitrary figure picked it to suit a preformed opinion, it’s that fact that people adapt.

If there is less of a risk then people will push it till the risk is the same.

If it’s easier for people to be rescued then people will start to rely on it rather than use it as a emergency service.

Once people start relying on signs, or that SAR will be able to know their exact position then the time it does fail the finger of blame will be point at SAR rather than the stupid person/group.

The car analogy was just there to show that as an example, a precedent if you wish.

 

[Ralph Burgess]

I’m not distorting your words in the least, I just quoted the part that I was responding to;  in any event your full post is right above for anyone to read.  The thesis of your post about risk compensation was underpinned by a detailed exposition of how road safety has not improved because safety measures have been offset by behavioral changes.  That claim is simply not supported by the evidence.

The psychological process of risk compensation that you’re describing is very important, I agree.  I’ve mentioned it myself several times on the board with reference to SPOT devices and bear spray.  But road safety is just not a good example of the point you want to make, nobody who looks at the data is going to be swayed.  Behavioral changes may have offset some of the safety improvements, but it’s not possible to discern that from the data that show that road travel is dramatically safer than it was in the past.   Your chance of dying per mile driven is one third what it was in 1980.

[Joseph Elfelt]

I am the developer of FindMeSAR.com.  Thanks for the kind words.

I live in Washington State, not that far from Bainbridge Island.  While it is great that the park district put up any kind of sign to help people in trouble, the signs they used are not even a bingo grid.  Instead, those signs are based on a code for the trail and a sequential number.

A vastly better approach would be to use signs like this trail has in NE Minnesota.  These signs display the location using the coordinate system known as U.S. National Grid (USNG). http://www.co.lake.mn.us/departments/emergency_management/arrowhead_trail_marker_project.php

For more information on signs that display USNG coordinates see http://usngcenter.org/portfolio-item/elm-system/

Here is another good resource with info on USNG:  http://usngflorida.org/

Below are some tips for contacting 911 with a cell phone.  I have more research to do on this topic then I will produce a report.  Some of this I learned by reading FCC orders and related documentation.

1. If at all possible, make a voice call to 911 instead of texting.  Even if you cannot provide  your location to 911, the cell towers will produce data records that can be analyzed by trained specialists to narrow the search area.
2. If you do text to 911 you *must* provide an accurate location.  When a text arrives at the 911 call center it does not have *any* location data unless you provide it in the text.
3. If you make a voice call to 911 let it ring 45-60 seconds.  If your carrier does not answer after 17 seconds, then your phone is hardwired to try to connect to any carrier that the phone is pysically able to connect to.  All carriers must handle all 911 calls.  If you hang up your 911 call after 15 seconds, you might be SOL.
4. If you have a calling plan but do not see any bars on your phone, then you should still try calling 911 and let it ring for 45-60 seconds.  Your call might be picked up by a different carrier (per the 17 second rule) but of course that different carrier is not going to display any bars on your phone.
5. Phones that have no service plan at all can still call 911.
6. If you make a voice cell phone call to 911 then the dispatcher will always get “phase 1” coordinates.  This is the location of the cell tower carrying the call.  You could easily be several miles away.
7. If a voice call lasts at least 30 seconds then the carrier handling the call is supposed to provide the dispatcher with “phase 2” coordinates for your location.  But the FCC regs allow the carrier *huge* exemptions from this requirement.  And even for calls that are not exempt, sometimes this tech simply does not work.
8. If you have an android phone then set the location mode (or method) to “GPS only”.  The battery saving mode ignores the GPS chip in your phone and the so-called “high accuracy” mode (at least on some phones) can let data from cell towers degrade the more accurate data from the satellites.
9. Critical tip for people who keep location services turned off.  Let’s assume your phone can see both the USA satellites (“GPS”) and the Russian satellites (“GLONASS”).  In order for your phone to use either constellation your phone must have a current almanac for that constellation.  Most phones support A-GPS which means your phone gets almanac data for “GPS” very quickly from the cell towers.  However, I suspect only a few phones support A-GLONASS.  Thus, if your phone has no almanac data and you turn location services on and you are in range of a cell tower, then your phone will only use GPS (USA satellites) to display your location.  If you are in a poor reception area (canyon, heavy forest) you might not get any location displayed or the accuracy might be terrible.  After 15-20 minutes your phone will have downloaded the GLONASS almanac data from the GLONASS satellites and will start to use data from the GLONASS satellites to provide a more accurate location.

Bottomline:  Everyone whether they hike or not needs and easy-to-use app on their phone that displays their location in decimal degrees.  Whether you and the people you care about use FindMeSAR or something else does not matter.  What does matter is that everyone does something more than nothing so when they call 911 they will be able to provide their coordinates and accuracy value if needed.

Joseph

 

 

[Ralph Burgess]

That’s great information Joseph, thanks.   Some of that stuff is really not intuitive – it needs to be disseminated widely in the backpacking community, it could save lives.

[Jerry Adams]

what an interesting thread, a little bit of everything : )

“The first 30 locators were installed in Grand Forest Park, a 240-acre swath of woods with 6 miles of trails and several trailheads.”

Amazing that anyone can get lost on 6 miles of trails and 240 acres.

Those signs might work in a small park like that.  There probably are a lot of city people there.

One of these days I’m going to retire my flip phone and buy a smart phone – join the 21st century.  Also give up my Vista PC and replace it with something, but I hate having to install new software.  Oh, my cars are 1996 and 2000, time for them to go to…I could replace the battery and tires on the 1996, but it’s current state may motivate me to replace it.

[Mark]

I’m not distorting your words in the least, I just quoted the part that I was responding to;  in any event your full post is right above for anyone to read.  The thesis of your post about risk compensation was underpinned by a detailed exposition of how road safety has not improved because safety measures have been offset by behavioral changes.  That claim is simply not supported by the evidence.

The psychological process of risk compensation that you’re describing is very important, I agree.  I’ve mentioned it myself several times on the board with reference to SPOT devices and bear spray.  But road safety is just not a good example of the point you want to make, nobody who looks at the data is going to be swayed.  Behavioral changes may have offset some of the safety improvements, but it’s not possible to discern that from the data that show that road travel is dramatically safer than it was in the past.   Your chance of dying per mile driven is one third what it was in 1980.

Ralph,

With respect, you took 3 lines from 3 completely different paragraphs and stitched them together as though it was a single quote, a quote that comes to a summation i was not aiming for

My point was that people adapt, if risks are reduced then they’ll either rely on that (which makes it even worse if that safety net is then removed at a later date) or take more risks to compensate.

You can’t eliminate stupid people doing stupid things, and if we could who on earth would want to live in a society that’s structured around protecting stupid people while sensible people have to suffer their consequences.

The ONLY good thing i about having a system to locate people quickly is that it means SAR spend less time from their family.

I’d bet my underpants that if systems like this are brought into place widely that SAR will start to get more and more call outs as people start to use this system as default rather than relying on themselves.

 

 

[Nick Gatel]

I wrote this a couple years ago

The Death of Renaissance Man

[Jeremy and Angela]

In the case of the 6 mile/ 240 acre park, I think the examples weren’t for being lost so much as for a medical emergency.  I can see it being quite easy for someone to know where they are, but not being able to accurately communicate that to someone else.

If you make a voice call to 911 let it ring 45-60 seconds.  If your carrier does not answer after 17 seconds, then your phone is hardwired to try to connect to any carrier that the phone is pysically able to connect to.  All carriers must handle all 911 calls.  If you hang up your 911 call after 15 seconds, you might be SOL. [ed- emphasis added]

This is a particularly useful one!  I’ve always heard it will try any carrier, but haven’t been in a position to try it out, or known about this 17 second cut-off.

(Forum bug appears to bold the entire quote…)

[Bob Moulder]

Good point about using decimal degrees for latitude/longitude as well, and this should be the universal default for GPS devices and phones when they exit the factory.

Deg/min/sec and Deg/m.mmm are easily confused and very few people learn enough about their devices to go into ‘settings’ and change them, and are even more clueless as to why they would do so. Probably (?) far fewer errors with people relating DD.dddd to rescuers than other kinds of coordinates.

I am very familiar with UTM but definitely need to school myself on USNG to understand how it might be better than UTM, which seems simple enough to me, but…………

[BlackHatGuy]

“My point was that people adapt, if risks are reduced then they’ll either rely on that (which makes it even worse if that safety net is then removed at a later date) or take more risks to compensate.”

Somewhat related article, and a fascinating read.

[Jeremy and Angela]

Bob, USNG uses the same grid as UTM, but makes it more foolproof.  It’s essentially identical to MGRS.  I would almost prefer it as the device default instead of lat/lon, for a few reasons, but that’s another post.

I think this part is key, and often underestimated.  Michael Coyle, a SAR volunteer up in BC wrote in his blog: “First I would like to point out that the most probable place where an error in a GPS location happens is when one person reads the location out to another over the phone or a radio. There’s something about the transmission of numbers over the air; I’ve personally witnessed several instances where the reader misstates, or the recorder writes down the wrong numbers. This issue becomes more prevalent when one of the party in the communications link is scared, cold, and inexperienced with GPS coordinates.”

I’ve also noticed the same, which is where the USNG simplicity helps (as the saying goes, they can even teach it to Marines).

Examples of the two (overlaps in bold):
10T 533795E 5278150N
10T ET 33795 78150

First, UTM northing and easting values are different lengths (6 vs. 7 digits).  They’re rather long, increasing the potential for errors, and it’s messier to truncate them.

Second, truncation is a good thing.  If you’re using your average USGS topo, 100m accuracy is generally good enough, and probably about as precise as practical with the paper map.  What does this mean for the user?

10T ET 33795 78150 can be trimmed to 10T ET 337 781.  Also, the zone identifier is usually not needed as long as you know roughly which national park you’re in.  So, you can often leave it off as well, and for practical navigation you’re left with 337 781 as a simple, unique coordinate within an area of nearly four thousand square miles.

-J

[Joseph Elfelt]

To follow up on Jeremy’s post, FEMA has officially adopted USNG as the coordinate system it will use for all ground ops.  Here is the signed and dated directive.

https://mappingsupport.com/p/sar/FEMA_USNG_Directive_Final_10_15_2015.pdf

The interest in USNG grew out of past hurricane responses where there was locational chaos.

The state of Florida forestry service is in the process of converting to USNG.

I previously have posted on BPL about Gmap4 which is an enhanced Google map viewer I developed.  You can pick from several coordinate formats including USNG.  Here is the google aerial centered on park on Bainbridge Island where the trails signs were placed.  The map displays a USNG grid.  If you keep zooming in the grid will get to 10 meters.

https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?usng=10T_ET_3295_7779&tilt=off&z=14&t=h

Joseph

[John S.]

Granny could build a woodfire in two seconds.

[Author]

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