When a person is reported missing, search and rescue (SAR) teams are often called to assist.
SAR responders from the Morgantown-based Mountaineer Area Rescue Group (MARG) recently released a paper on their development of a new method for evaluating search effectiveness.
The report, which was published in the January 2023 issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Search and Rescue, promises to save lives by providing more informed direction for search efforts during extended operations.
The study’s primary author, Ken Chiacchia, who serves as a search manager and dog handler with MARG, said the new methodology expands on the effective sweep method developed by the U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force after World War II to help them evaluate the expansion of search efforts for missing aircraft and downed pilots.
Previously, researchers weren’t sure if the military method would translate to searching for missing people on the ground, but Chiacchia said this research validates the theoretical relationship between probability of detection (POD) and sweep width in ground SAR.
Chiacchia and co-author Heather Houlahan, a dog handler in MARG and professional dog trainer, used field-measured POD values to determine effective sweep width, a numerical value representing the detectability of a subject in a particular search situation.
Chiacchia said this information can be used by search managers to determine whether an area should be searched again, or whether the search should move on to new areas.
“Whenever you are searching for somebody, you have to answer a few questions,” he said. “The first one is, where do I look for them? Second is how do I look for them? And the third is when do I start looking someplace else?”
To determine where and how to start looking, SAR teams use statistics from the International Search and Rescue Database, which collects numbers from all over the world on missing people like hikers, hunters, Alzheimer’s patients, including where and when they were found.
“That gives you the ability to say, ‘Well, if my guy is like the people that went missing before, there’s a 25% chance they are in this distance of where they were last seen; there is a 50% chance of this distance,’ ” Chiacchia explained. “Then you send search teams out based on that and 90% of the time you find them and it’s a happy ending.”
Chiacchia said his research really comes into play for that other 10% of cases where the person is not found during the first sweep of the search area. If nothing is found, search managers need to determine whether to expand the search, suspend the search until more evidence of where they might be is found, or determine the likelihood something was missed in the areas already searched because no search method is perfect.
“POD gives you an ability to do that,” Chiacchia said. “You can go back and say there is a 25% chance the person is within this area, and we searched it to 50% POD, so the chance they are still there has got to be half of 25% — 12.5%.
“So, you are chasing the highest probabilities that the person is in that area,” he said.
Chiacchia said his findings ultimately mean when SAR teams are working on something like a multi-day search and it’s up in the air if the person will be found, suddenly they have the ability to make better decisions on whether they need to look at this area again or the likelihood the person is somewhere else.
“You never have enough searchers to search every place you want,” he said. Having more informed search locations will really cut back on the time SAR teams spend searching or researching areas that are unlikely to yield a result.
“You’re always dealing with a situation where you don’t have as many resources as you want and so you’ve got to prioritize — and this is about prioritizing.”
Chiacchia said the research at this point is mainly valid for the conditions of the northeast in the Appalachian regions and might not translate to areas like the southwest desert regions.
“We definitely need to do this in more places,” he said. “The problem is it took us six years to do this and to collect the data. So we need a better way of doing this — a better way of collecting data.”
He is hoping to find someone who can program an app that generates and sends data back to be analyzed.
There are a few people known to have been reported missing to authorities in the Morgantown area and not yet found.
Bryn Jack Hargreaves, 36, was reported missing to the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 16, 2022, and had last communicated with family and friends around Jan. 3, 2022.
Hargreaves, originally from Wigan, England, had been living at the Whisper Creek Apartments in the Cheat Lake area of Morgantown. He is described as a white male with brown hair, 6-foot-2 and weighing around 220 pounds. He has a tattoo of a family crest on his right arm. In England, Hargreaves is well-known as a former professional rugby player who retired from the sport in 2012.
Detective Jonathan Friend said the department has not had any new developments in Hargreaves’ case.
In October 2022, Jeremiah Erb, 41, was reported missing to the Westover Police Department. He had not been seen by family in over a year. He was last known to be attending Jacob’s Ladder substance abuse facility.
A police report was discovered where the Morgantown Police had made contact with Erb on Dec. 26, 2021, but that was the last-known contact anyone had with the missing man. It is believed Erb did not have an official residence and may be a member of the homeless community in the area.
Sgt. Hilling with Westover Police has entered Erb’s information into several national databases in an attempt to locate him. Erb is said to be a white male, 6-foot-1, weighing approximately 180 pounds.
Burl Sapp, 17, was reported missing to the Morgantown Police Department on Feb. 15, 2022. He is described as a white male, 5-foot-8, weighing approximately 170 pounds with brown hair and eyes. He has multiple tattoos.
Morgantown Police said they received information that Sapp had contacted a friend via Facebook on Feb. 24, 2022, asking about a place to stay but since then police have not received any information or been able to locate the runaway juvenile.
Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of any of these individuals is asked to call the respective departments of the Mon County 911 center.
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