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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE MORNING REPORT Thursday, April 24, 2014 INCIDENTS Buffalo NSR Two Wilderness SAR Missions Conducted Within 24 Hours On the afternoon of Friday, April 18th, dispatch received a cell phone call from a man who reported that his 48-year-old wife had stumbled on a large cobble while hiking about three miles down the Centerpoint Trail in the Ponca Wilderness, possibly fracturing her right ankle. He also said that she was unable to bear any weight on her ankle and that she was asking to be rescued. Rangers and resource management staff, joined by personnel from a variety of cooperating agencies, including the park's search and rescue team, BUFFSAR, responded for the six-and-a-half mile round-trip carryout rescue. Rescuers carried a wheeled litter in to her location, stabilized her injury, packaged her into the litter, and carried her to the trailhead, where she was transferred to a waiting ambulance. A total of 39 people were involved in this rescue, all of whom demonstrated exemplary teamwork and communication. Ranger Melissa Moses served as incident commander. Less than 24 hours later, BUFFSAR personnel responded to a second rescue callout, this time for a 28-year-old man who had fallen about 50 feet while free climbing, or soloing, on a cliff in the vicinity of Hawksbill Crag in the Ozark National Forest portion of the Upper Buffalo Wilderness. He'd become painfully wedged in a tight crack between two large boulders on the ground, suffering significant injuries, and remained in that position for about two hours before first responders arrived at his location. Over 60 people were involved in the operation. They stabilized him, extricated him from the crack (which required some tricky patient handling), packaged him for a technical rescue, and conducted a vertical litter raising operation to the top of the 70-foot-high cliff. They then conducted a carryout for about a half mile to a waiting Air Evac helicopter, which airlifted him to Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, AR, where he is recovering from his injuries. Upper Buffalo District Ranger Mark Miller and Newton County SAR Coordinator Glenn Wheeler served as dual incident commanders under unified command. [Kevin Moses, Search and Rescue Coordinator] OTHER NEWS The following stories are among those in today's webpage editions of InsideNPS (available to NPS employees only) and the Morning Report (available to all readers): Fort McHenry NM&HS - The Fort McHenry Guard, a volunteer historical unit sponsored by the park and The Patriots of Fort McHenry, traveled to Dallas and Nashville to present the colors at the NCAA Men's Final Four on April 5th and Women's Final on April 8th. Springfield Armory NHS - Springfield Armory National Historic Site has joined forces with artists to create an exhibit of re-imagined weapons called “Steampunk Springfield Armory: Reimagining Our Nation's Weaponry.” Office of Communications - On April 16th, Director Jarvis hosted a webchat to answer questions about the Service's centennial in 2016. The video and transcript are now available on the InsideNPS homepage. Office of Information Resources - The Information Resources Directorate announces the release of Volume 1, Edition 4, of its newsletter, Radio Connection. A link is included to both current and past newsletters. Northeast Region - Margaret Welch of the Northeast Museum Services Center is one of only 90 archivists to have earned the digital archives specialist certificate from the Society of American Archivists. To see the full text of these stories, readers should go to one or the other of the following sites: NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index" http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index Non-NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/" http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/ The Morning Report is produced by the Office of Communications with the support of the Office of the Associate Director for Information Resources. Edited by Bill Halainen ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov" Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov). --- ### --- |