NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

MORNING REPORT

Thursday, February 11, 2010

INCIDENTS

Yosemite NP

Ailing Visitor Rescued From Ostrander Lake

On Sunday, February 7th, rangers at the Badger Pass Ranger Station received a radio transmission from the Ostrander Ski Hut reporting that a park visitor staying at the hut was in respiratory distress from pulmonary edema. The hut keeper reported that the 48-year-old man had attempted to ski back to Badger Pass that morning but was forced to return to Ostrander Lake due to his medical condition. The Ostrander Lake area had received several feet of new snow over the previous 48 hours in addition to over eight feet of new snow that had fallen in a number of winter storms over the last two weeks. As access to the ski hut was delayed due to the difficult trail conditions, a helicopter hoist operation was launched at the same time as a ground rescue team departed for Ostrander Lake from Badger Pass. After several attempts to take off from Fresno, a rescue mission by a California Highway Patrol hoist-capable helicopter was cancelled due to fog and low clouds. A second helicopter capable of landing on snow was ordered from Columbia, and was able to land in Yosemite Valley to pick up ranger/medic Jeff Webb. This second helicopter was unable to fly to Ostrander Lake, though, due to low cloud cover. Meanwhile, the ground team reached the ski hut. Ranger/medics Chad Andrews and Keith Lober provided medical care, and, with the assistance of Yosemite SAR team members, Badger Pass ski patrol personnel, and several park visitors staying at Ostrander, began extricating the patient in an over-snow rescue litter. Additional SAR team members arrived from Badger Pass to help complete the nine-hour-long rescue mission. The principles of operational leadership played a significant role in the decision-making process throughout the incident. [Mark Dowdle, Wawona Subdistrict Ranger]

OTHER NEWS

The following stories are among those in today's edition of InsideNPS:

Visitor and Resource Protection - Due to the continued shutdown of federal government operations in Washington and other locations along the East Coast due to the recent blizzards, the all-superintendents firearms call that was scheduled for this afternoon has been postponed.

Office of Personnel Management - Federal agencies in the Washington, D.C., area, which were closed on Monday and Tuesday due to the continuing impacts of last weekend's blizzard and yesterday due to the major storm that struck the East Coast, will be closed again on Thursday.

Hot Springs NP - Diane East, Hot Springs National Park's concessions and leasing specialist, is retiring on March 1st after over 36 years of service with the federal government. Photo.

To see these and other stories posted on InsideNPS (or NPS Digest, its public version), click on one or the other of the following links (please note that not all stories in the former appear in the latter):

NPS employees: HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index" http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index

Non-NPS employees: HYPERLINK "http://home.nps.gov/applications/digest/" http://home.nps.gov/applications/digest/

NPS serious incident submission standards can be found at the following web site: HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/notify" http://inside.nps.gov/notify

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Prepared by the Division of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Services, Washington Office, with the support of the Office of the Chief Information Officer. Edited by Bill Halainen ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Bill_Halainen@nps.gov" Bill_Halainen@nps.gov).

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