Post by Admin on Nov 4, 2007 11:48:28 GMT -5
Rope bridge can be seen in the background
Dax on the side of the boat to work scent off the water
Half of our side-to-side team, six fireman working ropes 
Dax climbed up on the side of the boat to indicate
I was signaling for a flag to be placed.
Shows how the pulley system was connected
This is literally where Dax and I got off
At debriefing, Dax decided to jump out of the back of the X-terra to be with meSearch was for a person who jumped into the flooding creek from a bridge and did not surface. F.D. requested us to search from bridge to 1.25 miles downstream. We ran dogs on shore near beginning and got scent, so determined that body was most likely trapped at spillway. Dax and I were deployed into a zodiac operated by 14 fireman, 2 in the boat and 6 on either shore working rope pulleys. Before deploying, the scent picture was described to the team that there would be no scent immediately above the body due to current, that a distance equivalent to the flow of the water and the height from body to surface would be where the dog would have scent. Estimates were given for 20-30 feet downstream from the body is where we'd get the very first scent and downstream from there. This was confirmed by the firemen in the boat that wanted to prove my theory once they understood that (in this application) Dax would become animated in scent and bored out of scent. Dax climbed up on the gunwale of the zodiac when she was in the strongest scent and began barking. We had a flag tied on the bridge at this point. We had the boat moved from side-to-side to determine when Dax went out of scent and had flags tied there as well. This gave a scent pool width of approximately 50 feet wide at 30 feet out from the spillway. Once the water was diverted, the body came up in line with where Dax had climbed up on the gunwale. The body was allowed to float down river and was caught in a net placed there for that purpose as the flow was still considered too dangerous for someone to be in the water.
