SAR COORDINATES
December 2008
TONTO RIM SEARCH AND RESCUE SQUAD, Inc.
P.O. BOX
357
STRAWBERRY
AZ 85544
A
self-supporting, not-for-profit group of volunteer citizens
dedicated to improving safety in the Arizona wilderness.
Operating
under the authority of the Gila County Sheriff's Office
John
Armer; Sheriff
TRSAR Squad meets
monthly
General Public Welcome
2nd
Thursday @ 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Payson
Public Library Meeting Room
328 N.
McLane Road - Payson, Arizona
Commander’s Corner
Quick Reminders:
Elections are this month. The Election
committee run by Claudia Bullard and Dave Pirtle have canvassed the
membership and found members willing to contribute their time to our
cause. You should have received your ballot in the mail. Please
send it in, or bring it to the meeting on Thursday, Dec 11. The
open positions this election cycle are:
-
Vice Commander
-
Treasurer
-
Board Member at large
Mission Summaries:
11/17/08 – Barnhardt
Trailhead – cancelled within 30 minutes
11/29/08 – Horton Spring – Lost, then found
injured. Extracted without incident. Very good response for this
mission during a Holiday weekend – Thanks! If the call had occurred
30 minutes later, we might have been short of folks, as several of
us were heading up to Flagstaff for the PHS Longhorns State
Championship game – which they WON in double overtime after being
down 20-0 in the first half! Go Longhorns!
Preparation:
Colder weather is here. Very cold weather has
been occurring in some parts of the country, and probably sooner
than later it is going to be here. An unexpected overnight on the
trail is a real possibility and a serious event during the winter.
Make sure your packs are prepared.
Stay safe and stay prepared.
Bill Pitterle – Commander, #500
The GCSO Christmas Party,
potluck and gift exchange is Saturday, December 13th
More info in
Members Only Area.
Don’t forget; the meetings this month are
December 9th
for the Board
and
December 11th
for the General Meeting.
December 2008 Training &
Events Schedule
Planned Training
Sessions (Coming this Year)
Tracking
- Coming in 2009: Aged Line Tracking Exercise
Certification Line
Classroom for Certification
Evader Line Tracking Exercise
Grid Search Exercise
Planned Navigation Training – Compass and GPS
If you would like to volunteer to run a training session, or if you
have a training session request contact
any Board Member or Don Johnson
Italics = Sign-up required to attend this training
* See following notes:
To reserve use of
squad ATV, contact Don Johnson at 928-474-5335 - Jacket,
gloves, boots, helmet, and eye protection required to operate Squad
ATV
Squad Web Site: www.trsar.org
_________________________________________________________________________________
Active:
Members wishing to remain on active status must attend at least
three official Squad functions per quarter of the calendar year, as
well as two training exercises per six months of the calendar year.
Reserve:
Members who wish to remain on reserve status must attend at least
one official Squad function per quarter of the calendar year as well
as one training exercise per six months of the calendar year.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Laws that are still on the books
In St. Louis, Missouri, it’s illegal for an on-duty fireman to
rescue a woman wearing a nightgown. If the woman wants to be
rescued, she must be fully clothed.
The sale of ice cream was banned on Sundays in
Ohio, because it was deemed frivolous and luxurious. Merchants,
therefore, began topping the ice cream with scoops of fruit thereby
deeming the dish healthy and nutritious. Lo and behold, the “ice
cream sundae” was invented.
It’s illegal to sell ice cream after 6 p.m. in
Newark, New Jersey, unless the customer has a doctor’s note.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Related SAR info
――――――――
Fires, tents make a
deadly combination
06/11/01
Story
by Craig Medred
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - For thousands of years,
the Plains Indians heated their tents with fire. The drafty
teepees they called home were basically designed to wrap
around a firepit. The teepee had a big opening in the roof to
let out smoke and fumes and a loose-fitting door to let in
plenty of oxygen.
A hundred years ago in the Alaska Bush,
miners and trappers who roamed the wilds lived in heated
tents. Archdeacon Hudson Stuck carried a tent and a stove in
his sled on his 10,000 miles by dog sled across the state. The
Sourdough Expedition that nearly reached the summit of Mount
McKinley in 1910 packed tents, wood stoves and wood almost two
miles up that mountain.
Their tents were but a small improvement on
those of the Indians. They closed them up more to get rid of
some of the draftiness, but made sure to vent the fire.
Fire was a friend to these people in the
cold arctic night. Heat was one of the few luxuries they knew.
Were they to return to Alaska today, it
might shock them to learn that the warm, heated tent is no
longer a friend - but a deadly enemy.
Recently, a charcoal grill used to heat a
tent near Circle Hot Springs north of Fairbanks killed two
men.
Last fall, a propane heater used in a tent
near Tok killed a moose hunter from Iowa camped along the
Taylor Highway.
In 1994, a propane heated tent nearly killed
five mushers in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Eight years before that, a tent heated with
a butane stove killed two Swiss climbers at 14,000 feet on
Mount McKinley.
Blame technology.
Blame human thoughtlessness.
Blame what you will, but recognize these are
tragic and unnecessary deaths.
Part of the problem is that there are so few
tents on the market these days designed to operate with
stoves; most of those available are old-fashioned, cotton wall
tents.
Cotton is heavy and subject to rot. Most of
the stoves designed for use in wall tents are likewise heavy.
Nearly all of them burn wood, which is time-consuming to
collect and somewhat dirty to burn.
Most major manufacturers abandoned
wood-stove heated tents decades ago and gave up cotton in
favor of nylon or polypropylene. These fabrics are lightweight
and resist rot, though most of them will break down in
sunlight.
What they will also do is burn - easily and
rapidly.
For that reason, most manufacturers avoid
making accommodations for heat in their tents. Overtly
encouraging people to heat today's tents of nylon and polypro
would significantly increase the likelihood of tent fires.
A tent fire would sooner or later kill
somebody, and then the tent manufacturer would probably be
looking at a massive lawsuit.
If you are a tent manufacturer, this is a
good reason to avoid heated tents like the plague.
The public wants lightweight, durable tents.
Give the public what it wants. And if people die or nearly die
trying to heat these tents with camp stoves, propone heaters
or, in the most recent case near Fairbanks, a charcoal grill,
it's their problem.
Most tent owners understand this. Others,
obviously, don't.
All they seem to know is that it is as cold
inside an unheated tent today as it was 100 years ago, so they
do what they can to warm the tent. Since there is no
convenient way to put a vented wood stove in most modern
tents, people turn to easier, apparently cleaner, or simpler
methods of heat.
They fire up a propane heater, a camp stove
or even, as in the case of the men north of Fairbanks last
week, a charcoal grill. All of these devices produce carbon
monoxide.
Carbon monoxide is an odorless, tasteless
gas given off as a byproduct of combustion.
Your blood loves carbon monoxide. Scientists
calculate that your blood's attraction to carbon monoxide is
210 times stronger than your blood's attraction to oxygen.
Because of this, carbon monoxide quickly
replaces oxygen in your bloodstream. Your brain begins to
starve from lack of oxygen. You get dizzy and nauseous.
Eventually, unless something is done to get rid of the carbon
monoxide, you die.
According to U.S. authorities, carbon
monoxide is the leading cause of poisoning deaths in the
United States.
Alaska, according to an American Medical
Association study, led the nation in per capita carbon
monoxide deaths in the 1990s. Alaskans perished in tents,
cars, houses and who knows what else.
One man died in a hunting shack on the Kenai
Peninsula some years ago when a charcoal grill was brought
inside to provide heat in the fall. Charcoal fires are among
the biggest producers of carbon monoxide.
Everyone ought to know that, but it's
obvious from the deaths around Alaska each year that some
don't. As a species, we seem to have forgotten what the
sourdoughs knew and before them the Indians and before them,
quite possibly, the cave men:
Fires need to breath, or they will kill you.
Fires need a place to exhale bad air (a
stack) and a place to inhale good air (a vent).
Without those things, fire fills the air
with its waste (carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) at the
same time it is sucking the oxygen out of the air to maintain
itself.
If you are in a tightly-closed tent with a
source of fire, be it a smoldering charcoal grill or a
seemingly clean-burning propane stove, that fire is pumping
your environment full of poisonous gas at the same time it is
sucking out the oxygen you need to breath to survive.
Time and time again, this has proven a
deadly combination. It is unfortunate that there are any who
fail to understand. Don't let yourself be one of them.
(Rewritten with the permission of
Anchorage Daily News)
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Great article on hiking the Grand Canyon
http://www.azod.com/Camp-Hiking/2007/rim2rim/by_eric_krueger.htm
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Computer Tips, Techniques, Rants, Raves, and Netiquette
submitted by Les Hulse
Instead
of submitting a hopefully useful article this month, let me offer up
a bit of amusement for the holiday season. The following is found on
“www.annoyances.org” and is considered in the public domain. You can
go to this site for other examples of computer humor.
The Use of Computers in Movies
 |
Word processors never display a
cursor. |
|
You never have to use the space-bar
when typing long sentences. |
|
All monitors display inch-high
letters. |
|
The most relevant information is
displayed in a separate window right in the middle of the screen,
but there's never an Ok button to other way to close it.
|
|
High-tech computers, such as those
used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will
have easy to understand graphical interfaces. Those that don't,
have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can
correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.
|
|
Corollary:
you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing
"ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard. |
|
Likewise, you can infect a computer
with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS" (see
Fortress). |
|
All computers are connected. You
can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even
if it's turned off. |
|
Powerful computers beep whenever
you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers
also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go
faster than you can read. |
|
The really advanced ones
also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer. (See The Hunt
For Red October or Alien) |
|
All computer panels have thousands
of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions
are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of
sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards. |
|
Corollary:
sending data to a modem/tape drive/printer faster than expected
causes it to explode. |
|
People typing away on a computer
will turn it off without saving the data. (See the opening credits
for The Hunt For Red October) |
|
A hacker can get into the most
sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the
secret password in two tries. |
|
Any PERMISSION DENIED error has an
OVERRIDE function (see Demolition Man and countless
others). |
|
Complex calculations and loading of
huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds.
Movie modems (especially the wireless ones they must be using when
they're in the car) usually appear to transmit data at the speed
of two gigabytes per second. |
|
When the power
plant/missile-site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will
explode, as will the entire building. |
|
If a disk has got encrypted files,
you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access
them. |
|
No matter what kind of computer
disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All
application software is usable by all computer platforms.
|
|
The more high-tech the equipment,
the more buttons it has (Aliens). However, everyone must
have been highly trained, because none of the buttons are labeled.
|
|
Most computers, no matter how
small, are able to produce reality-defying three-dimensional,
active animation, photo-realistic graphics, with little or no
detailed input from the user. |
|
Laptops, for some strange reason,
always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and
the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer. |
|
Whenever a character looks at a
VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her
face (see Alien, 2001, Jurassic Park).
|
|
Either a Jacob's Ladder or a
Van Der Graaf Generator is absolutely necessary for the
operation of new, experimental computers (especially when built by
brilliant scientists), although in real life, these devices do
absolutely nothing. |
|
One can issue any complex set of
commands in a few keystrokes (see Star Trek). |
|
The internet connects to everything
in the movies. You can edit credit records, search hotel
registries, lookup police criminal files, search (and edit)
drivers license databases, edit social security files and more
just using the internet! (see The Net) |
|
Smashing the VDU prevents the whole
system from working (see Speed). |
|
You can launch nuclear missiles
from any bedroom using an analog modem, but only if you know a
single secret password (see War Games). |
