Carson City Sheriff's Search and Rescue Assits Lyon County Search and Rescue
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 3:44pm
Two kayakers spent Father's Day on the Carson River. A father and son combination put their kayaks into the water near Bertonelli's pit around 2:30pm and left their vehicle at the Santa Maria Ranch Park in Dayton. They got caught up many times on rocks and low water areas and soon found themselves in the dark and unable to continue.
The Carson City SAR Command Staff went to the pit and met with Sheriff Furlong and an Operations Chief was assigned to the Carson City Corporate Yard to gather vehicles and equipment. All members came together at Bertonelli's pit. A SAR member was sent to the Santa Maria Ranch park to see if the subjects had gotten out of the water at that location.
The Carson City Park Ranger went to the end of the dirt road in Brunswick Canyon and contacted a fisherman named Richard. Richard saw the two Kayakers about two hours prior (18:30) to our call out and said the father and son duo were in good spirits and had continued down river. Richard showed SAR where he saw the kayakers on USGS quad maps. Lyon SAR was given the information and the coordinates became the Point Last Scene (PLS).
Lyon SAR requested Carson SAR's help and Carson SAR moved to a park in Dayton where the Lyon Command Center was located. Once we were briefed by The Lyon SAR Commander, two vehicles from CarsonSAR were sent to Darf road to search the river from west to east while Lyon SAR went from east to west on both sides of the river. The search was designated a Joint Command Operation between Carson SAR and Lyon County SAR.
Washoe's Raven and CareFlight were summoned to the scene, but Careflight was called off after the Raven aircraft was confirmed to enter the search location faster than CareFlight. Raven was then cancelled before takeoff because the subjects were found.
CarsonSAR and Lyon County SAR made contact with the subjects at approx 0100. The kayakers had built a fire to alert SAR search teams to their location and waved paddles as the teams approached. The subjects were briefly questioned and they did not appear to need any medical care, only a warm jacket and a ride back to their vehicle. Lyon Sar provided near by EMT support in the event of injuries sustained by the kayakers and visual backup to the meeting location.
The father and son team and their kayaks were loaded onto the top of the CarsonSAR jeep and transported to the Command Post. They were interviewed by Lyon County Deputies and released at approx 0200.
It was a great team effort by both teams. Lycon County SAR Commander Patty Polish performed a great calculation on where the people should be base upon the Point Last Seen and the estimated speed of travel on the low river. LyonSAR was very accommodating to Carson SAR and very pleasant to work with.
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