Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Thursday 27 June 2019

Tech makes it easier to search wilderness for missing people

By AUDREY McAVOY view them wherever they
Associated Press are. Government officials
HONOLULU (AP) — Yesenia are looking at adopting
D’Alessandro loaded a new technology, includ-
GPS tracking app on her ing in Hawaii. Most large
cellphone and trudged searches are done by vol-
into a remote Hawaii for- unteers because many
est, joining more than 100 places don’t do enough of
other volunteers looking for them to keep official teams
a missing hiker. on staff.
She climbed through mud- Maui firefighters used hand-
dy ravines, crossed streams drawn maps as they looked
and faced steep drop-offs for Eller over the first three
in the thick tangle of trees days of her going missing.
and ferns where her col- That’s because the trail sys-
lege friend Amanda Eller tem in the Makawao Forest
vanished last month. Reserve where she got lost
“You have to search every- doesn’t appear on Google
where,” said D’Alessandro, Maps. County officials also
who flew in from Maryland. overlaid aerial searches
“You have to go down onto a satellite map.
to that stream bed, even Maui County Fire Services
though you don’t want to. Chief Rylan Yatsushiro said
She could be down there.” the Maui Fire Department
D’Alessandro and others would adopt similar tech-
gathered GPS data of the nology used by volunteers
ground they covered, and — who kept the search
organizers put it on a spe- going after the first three
cialized digital map to help days — if firefighters found it
better understand where to helpful after studying avail-
look next. able options.
The technology led vol- Mike St. John, volunteer
unteers to Eller, who was leader of the search and
found next to a waterfall rescue unit at the Marin
and survived for 17 days in County Sheriff’s Office in
the Maui forest by eating California, said GPS track-
plants and drinking stream ing of where people have
water. Her dramatic rescue This photo provided by Yesenia D’Alessandro shows a volunteer in the Makawao Forest Reserve looked is “really critical.”
shows how emerging tech- in Haiku, Hawaii on May 16, 2019, while searching for Amanda Eller, a yoga teacher and physical “It’s about using GPS maps
nology helps search teams therapist who went missing during a hike. and utilizing GPS to make
more efficiently scour the Associated Press sure you’re hitting your as-
wilderness for missing peo- and further out of the box ping digital pins on volun- agencies. signment,” said St. John,
ple. if we hadn’t completely teers’ maps to give them What started as a hobby who was among those
“It kind of led us to search searched the box,” said targets, pushing volunteers project has grown in popu- in California advising the
outside of that high-priority Chris Berquist, a volunteer to cover more ground and larity in the past couple of Maui team.
area to where we actually search leader. making the search more years to become Jacobs’ St. John said his search and
found Amanda,” her fa- David Kovar, advocacy accurate. full-time job. Search and rescue experts are not set
ther, John Eller, said. director for the nonprofit When searchers ran into rescue teams from Oregon up to offer the same type
More U.S. teams are turn- National Association for cliffs or pools of water, to North Carolina have of help to others that they
ing to the technology that Search and Rescue, said Berquist had them place started using it. gave to Maui but are trying
combines cellphone GPS most search and rescue digital pins on their maps. Searchers used it in March to figure out how to do that
with digital maps detail- teams use digital maps. Organizers then sent drone as 100 volunteers fanned in the future.
ing cliffs, caves, waterways That could mean anything pilots or rappelling experts out in a Northern California Berquist, the Hawaii search
and other hard-to-search from basic Google Maps to to the cliffs and divers to forest, eventually finding leader, visited California this
terrain. It helps manage the specialized software called the water. 8-year-old Leia Carrico and week to talk with St. John
work of large numbers of SARTopo, which California Organizers fed the GPS her 5-year-old sister, Caro- about how Marin County’s
volunteers. search and rescue experts data to the California line, who got lost near their volunteer program works.
The system showed when used to advise Maui volun- team, which used SARTopo home. He aims to set up some-
Hawaii searchers had cov- teers from afar. to overlay it on topographi- Last month, teams used it to thing similar back in Maui.
ered a 2-mile (3-kilometer) Search organizers in Hawaii cal maps, allowing every- help locate a 67-year-old After technology helped
radius around Eller’s car. asked volunteers to down- one to see what areas had hiker who had veered off find Eller, her father is do-
After that, searchers sent a load a $3.99 app called already been searched a trail in a state park north nating software and other
helicopter farther into the GPS Tracks, which draws and what still needed to be of San Francisco. A Califor- equipment to Berquist’s
forest, where they spotted lines on a map showing checked. nia Highway Patrol airplane team, developing a search
the 35-year-old physical where a user has walked. Matt Jacobs, a California using an infrared camera and rescue app and giving
therapist and yoga instruc- GPS data revealed that software engineer and spotted the man. $10,000 to support Hawaii
tor. searchers were covering search volunteer, devel- SARTopo also is becoming searches and rescues.
“We never would have the same areas repeatedly oped SARTopo more than available as a cellphone “We saw a huge need. And
pushed out if we hadn’t as heavy foliage or natural eight years ago after no- app, which will make it we feel so lucky with every-
searched the reasonable barriers like cliffs blocked ticing teams struggling to even easier to directly con- thing everybody did for us,
area first. There’s no rea- their path, Berquist said. match details on wilderness nect the GPS data with dig- so we’re looking to give
son to start reaching further Organizers started drop- maps drawn by different ital maps so searchers can back,” John Eller said.q