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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE MORNING REPORT Friday, May 25, 2012 NOTICE This will be the last email transmittal of the Morning Report until Tuesday, June 12th. During that period, readers should go to either InsideNPS or the NPS Digest (links below) to read incident reports and other news. Kat Kirby ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Kathryn_Kirby@nps.gov" Kathryn_Kirby@nps.gov) will be acting editor during this period. INCIDENTS Great Smoky Mountains NP Three Arrested For Auto Break-Ins Park dispatch received a report of suspicious activity from park employees at the Elkmont Campground ranger station on April 25th. Three men in a red vehicle had been seen at the Little River trailhead looking into the windows of unoccupied cars. Ranger Heath Soehn searched for and found the car, which was heading away from the trailhead, and got its license plate number. While following it, he saw an object being thrown from the front passenger side window. Soehn and Ellen Paxton, a special agent on detail from ISB, stopped the car for the observed littering violation and found that the item that had been thrown from the car was a window punch. Soehn and Paxton soon learned that three vehicles with smashed-out windows had been found at the trailhead. During a search of the car, Paxton found property that turned out to belong to people from all three of those vehicles. The person who phoned in the initial report also identified the three men as the ones seen at the trailhead. Paxton prepared a criminal complaint charging them with felonies and later testified before a grand jury. A trial is set for July. The three men are believed to have committed eleven other larcenies in the park before being arrested by Soehn and Paxton. [Russell Roy, Jr., Assistant Special Agent In-Charge] New River Gorge NR Missing Boater's Body Found After Five Day Search On Wednesday, May 16th, a 911 dispatch center notified patrol rangers that a boating accident had been reported on the river and that a man was missing. After interviews with witnesses, rangers determined that the accident had occurred in Silo Rapid, located about two-and-a-half miles upriver from Stone Cliff campground. Hasty search teams in six boats searched both river banks for a distance of four miles downstream from where the victim was last seen. The muddy river, flowing nine feet above normal for this time of year due to heavy rains, made search operations difficult. The initial search was suspended at dark. From Thursday until Sunday, crews worked the pools and eddies below the accident site with drags, sonar, and probe poles. Volunteers assisted in the search by combing the river banks and working eddies from the bank side. All commercial rafting and fishing companies were notified of the incident. On Saturday night there was a one foot rise in the river level and on early Sunday morning the members of a commercial fishing trip reported a body floating about three-and-a-half miles downriver from the accident site. The victim, Bradley Alexander, was recovered by river rangers. His body has been sent to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. Oak Hill Fire Department water rescue, the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, Jan-Care Ambulance, a cadaver dog team, the Fayette County Sheriff's Department and numerous volunteers assisted with the search efforts. Eric Oaks served as the incident commander. [Jeff West, Chief Ranger] Big South Fork NR&RA Teenager Drowns In North White Oak Creek On the afternoon of Sunday, May 20th, D.P., 17, drowned in North White Oak Creek while swimming with a group of people at the end of the maintained section of O&W Road. D.P. and one of his friends had jumped into the creek from a large boulder. While swimming around the boulder and back to shore, D.P. started struggling and went underwater. Several people helped pull him out. CPR was started immediately. Because there was no cell phone reception in the area, some members of the group drove down the road until they were able to call 911. The National Park Service, Scott County Sheriff's Department and Scott County EMS responded and transported D.P. to St Mary's Hospital in Oneida, where he was pronounced dead. [Randy Scoggins, Chief Ranger] OTHER NEWS The following stories are among those in today's edition of InsideNPS. To see the full text, including images, NPS employees should go to the InsideNPS home page ( HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index" http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index). Non-NPS employees can see most of them on the NPS Digest page ( HYPERLINK "http://home.nps.gov/applications/digest/" http://home.nps.gov/applications/digest/): National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA yesterday announced that conditions in the atmosphere and the ocean favor a near-normal hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin this season. Over recent years, average seasons have produced 12 named storms with six hurricanes, including three major hurricanes. Park Facility Management Division - The spring issue of Sustainability News, “Innovations in Green Parks,” is now out. A link is provided. Southeast Region - Cameron "Cam" Sholly, superintendent of Natchez Trace Parkway, was recently named the Southeast Region's superintendent of the year for 2011. Servicewide Training and Conference Calendar - The following entries have been added to this week's calendar - five new FLETC offerings in either Georgia or New Mexico, a LEED technical review and exam preparation course at NCPTT in Louisiana, and three Scorecard webinars. * * * * The Morning Report is a publication of the Division of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Services, Washington Office, produced with the support of the Office of the Assistant Director for Information Resources and the Office of the Chief Information Officer. Edited by Bill Halainen ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Bill_Halainen@nps.gov" Bill_Halainen@nps.gov). --- ### --- |