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We heard about it on the news as did the rest of the town, saysRipton first responder team member Ed Sullivan, an employee ofMiddlebury College. Ripton was never officially notified that therewas a missing hiker, nor were they requested to participate in hisrecovery. Vermont State Police called us at 1 or 2 (p.m.) the next day tohelp in recovering Levi s body, said Dan Ober, chief of theLincoln Fire Company and director of the Lincoln first responderteam. Had Lincoln first responders been dispatched to respond to aninjured hiker in the area, they would have had boots on the groundin short order. When we get a call, we meet at the fire stationwith our gear, find whatever information we can about the lastsighting of the people, and set up a plan. We can have a team readyin the evenings or weekends in a half hour, Ober said. Duringthe day, when people are gone to work, it might take a littlelonger as we have to call people in from adjoining towns. We vesometimes called on Bristol Rescue or other adjoining rescue squadsor fire departments. The failure to call on skilled, available assistance does not sitwell with the first responders. There was no reason not to gothat night. It was a clear night and relatively warm. The statepolice had the resources available but decided not to go until thenext shift, which starts at 7 a.m. We have the resources here, andwe are volunteers, so it s not even a monetary thing, Ober said. We would have loved to go up. Everyone in this town is upsetabout it. Ober s distress is shared by Mike Cannon, a Colchester policeofficer passionately dedicated to the Colchester Technical Rescueteam, a municipal organization similar to Stowe Mountain Rescuewith an emphasis on waterway and woodland search and rescue.Colchester and Stowe both have memorandums of agreement with theVermont Department of Public Safety to provide search and rescueaid, and can have teams on the ground in most areas of the statewithin two or three hours. Like Ripton first responders, they werenot called until state police required aid in recoveringDuclos' body. I m pretty upset that this kid died. We debriefed afterwards andwe were all shaking our heads, Cannon said. This has been astomachache for us since we went down there. Had we been called onthis, we would have gone right out. We got called the next day,well after the fact. Colchester Technical Rescue could have been on the ground in shortorder, Cannon said. Stowe Mountain Rescue and our team do a fair amount of missingpeople searches and in all kinds of weather, late at night, rain,sleet, and if you do it right, you minimize the risk." Mike Cannon Colchester Technical Rescue If the call had come in here in Colchester, we would organize andgo," Cannon said. "Our normal response may not be tosend 14 people up the trail immediately but we d send two guys outon a hasty search. Stowe Mountain Rescue and our team do a fairamount of missing people searches and in all kinds of weather, lateat night, rain, sleet, and if you do it right, you minimize therisk. Conditions the night of Jan. 9 were far milder than ColchesterRescue often faces. That night, it was 28 degrees at my house and got to the singledigits on the mountain, but it was a beautiful moonlit night, witha clear sky, the stars were out. It would have been a great nightto be out there, Cannon said, not the kind of conditions weusually are facing because mostly these calls come in during rainor snow or sleet. Vermont State Police did not call Stowe Mountain Rescue to searchfor Duclos, nor did anyone call the Community Emergency ResponseTeam (CERT), according to Matt Fraley, the Addison County CERT teamdirector and member of the Vergennes Fire Department. CERT, thevolunteer team formed as part of a national Homeland Securityeffort, is available to assist any law enforcement or emergencymanagement entity in Vermont, and has ground teams in every county. Vermont Fish and Wildlife wardens are also available to participatein any law enforcement function including search and rescue. We cooperate when requested by the state police but they are theones deciding what services are required," says Corporal DaveLeCours of Vermont Fish and Wildlife. "We ve always been awilling participant in search and rescue when called on, and ourwardens have intimate knowledge of the ground and land navigationskills. State police did not request the assistance of local game wardenDale Whitlock, an Addison County resident who is well familiar withthe area s woodlands and mountain trails until the morningfollowing Duclos disappearance. They did page me a bit after 6 a.m. the next morning, but I wasat the police academy down in Pittsford at the time, Whitlocksaid. While state police did not call on any outside resources to searchfor Duclos the night he was reported missing, Cushing, the statepolice Search and Rescue unit team leader, credits those resourceswith making search and rescue in Vermont work. I do think that the present situation works as far as search andrescue goes in Vermont, as long as we have these outside interestsassisting us, said Cushing. We couldn t do what we do withoutthem. The problem is we don t see a lot of people asking tohelp. Other entities, however, say that the Vermont State Police hasrejected offers of additional help. Some years ago I took the NASAR (National Association for Searchand Rescue) three-day training class they held here in Vermont, andI was very interested in learning more about search and rescue andacquiring whatever certifications were required to get involved inthat. I m an avid hiker and fisherman so it interested me, saidBristol EMT McCausland. But I later came to understand that theVermont State Police has sole jurisdiction and didn t want or needcivilian personnel because they said people would just be messingup the tracks and interfering with them. So I just gave up. The Vermont Outdoor Guide Association, a nonprofit professionalassociation for fishing and hunting guides, horseback and dogsledoutfits and a spectrum of recreation tourism resources, hadsimilarly approached the Vermont State Police Search and RescueUnit some years ago, requesting that VSP join its annual meeting todiscuss how VOGA s backcountry-savvy members could be of use insearch and rescue. Their offer was dismissed out of hand, accordingto VOGA director Gray Stevens, with VSP advising that they weresimply unqualified and unnecessary. It s risky to send people into the woods who aren t trained, Cushing said. Everyone wants to help and find the person andcomplete the mission. But you don t want people getting hurt. How other states find missing outdoorspeople Vermont s reliance on state police for backcountry search andrescue is somewhat unusual. Only a small handful of states nametheir state police, who are usually assigned to highway patrol orspecialized crime scene investigation, to the job of findingmissing hunters, hikers and climbers, according to Howard Paul,public information officer and member of the board of directors ofthe National Association for Search and Rescue. County sheriffs arethe most common lead agencies for search and rescue in Westernstates. In neighboring New Hampshire and Maine, state Fish and Gameagencies are in charge of finding lost outdoorspeople." Regardless of who is officially the lead public agency, search andrescue is primarily a volunteer function throughout the country. The vast majority of states have agreements with nonprofits, Paul said. In Western states it s probably 100 percent, and inNew Mexico and Alaska even though the state police are officiallyin charge there, they rely heavily on nonprofits to do the legworkof search and rescue. In neighboring New Hampshire and Maine, which have similar terrainand experience tourist and outdoor recreationalist use similar toVermont s, state Fish and Game agencies are in charge of findinglost outdoorspeople. They do so with the assistance of a host ofskilled nonprofit entities. In Vermont, despite the Green Mountain National Forest dominatingthe woodlands used for recreation in the state, there is virtuallyno federal assistance for search and rescue. In search and rescue our most common contribution is localknowledge of the land and trails, says Steve Burd, USFS zonesupervisor for the Allegheny, White and Green Mountain and FingerLakes National Forests. We provide maps and advice as to thetrail locations and conditions. Other employees, the people whobuild and maintain the trails, are called in. If we get called theofficers can reach out to the recreation or timber staff to sharetheir knowledge of the land. Federal law enforcement officers all two of them — canoccasionally take an active role in a search. On the GreenMountain National Forest, we have two law enforcement officers, onein Rochester and one in Manchester. We also have one criminalinvestigator, Burd says. In 2011, National Forest personnel assisted in 12 search and rescueincidents, as well as aiding in the aftermath of tropical stormIrene. Unlike national parks, which are staffed by large numbers ofpark rangers, national forests have minimal personnel. Despite theshift in national forest use over the last 20 years frompredominantly timber resource extraction to a multi-userecreational resource, law enforcement staffing levels have notbeen altered. In many cases of people lost on the Green Mountain National Forest,federal officials are not even notified. In the case of LeviDuclos, we were called the next morning, the morning of the 10th,by both the Department of Public Safety dispatcher and a gamewarden who I believe was on scene, Burd says. The federal government does pay the state police and severalVermont sheriffs departments for patrol services in NationalForest areas, and has a cooperation agreement allowing VermontState Police to use motorized vehicles in wilderness areas inlife-or-death situations. Although the national forest attractsscores of outdoor recreationalists to Vermont, the U.S. ForestService makes virtually no contribution to funding Vermont searchand rescue efforts on the National Forest. The VSP mandate In the end, Vermont State Police maintain primary control over mostlost recreationalist incidents in Vermont. This is because thesearch and rescue function is not only legislatively mandated,according to Cushing, but the raison d tre of the Vermont StatePolice. A Bennington College student went missing, and that s howVermont State Police arose, Cushing says, referencing thedisappearance of Paula Jean Weldon, who was last seen on anafternoon walk on the Long Trail outside Bennington in December1946. Paula s wealthy industrial engineer father in Connecticut,William Archibald Weldon, hired in Connecticut State Police asprivate investigators when Vermont s local sheriff departmentsfailed to find his daughter. The Connecticut State Police, joinedby New York State Police and later FBI agents, also failed tolocate Paula, but Weldon s bitter complaints to the VermontLegislature tipped the balance in favor of parties who had beenadvocating for development of a unified statewide policing agency.Despite the creation of the Vermont State Police a few monthslater, there was no trace. Paula Weldon was never found. The notion that search and rescue in Vermont has been mandated asthe exclusive province of the Vermont State Police is notnecessarily supported by a reading of the statutes, however. Lawenforcement is usually mandated for missing people in Vermont, butit s not that clear, said Cannon. You have to take a closelook at the statute and have to interpret it. The authorization statute creating the Vermont Department of PublicSafety merely directs the department to participate in searchesfor lost or missing persons. The state missing persons statuteimposes additional duties on the state police in regards tofulfilling Amber Alert and federal reporting requirements andallows the commissioner of Public Safety to assume lead agencystatus on any "missing person" case, but the definitionof "missing person" to which this applies is restrictedto children and people with mental or physical disabilities whocannot be located, and does not include overdue recreationalistsunless they happen to meet this definition. Other entities in Vermont do have authority to engage in search andrescue. The state Aeronautics Board, for example, is designated asthe lead agency for search and rescue of persons lost in airplaneaccidents. Vermont Fish and Wildlife wardens have the same law enforcementauthority, duties and power as state police, sheriffs, constablesand municipal police, according to their authorizing statute.Thus if the state police are charged with participating in thesearch for lost persons, Fish and Wildlife wardens are equallycharged with the same duty. The dispatch of state police rathergame wardens or other entities in calls of missing recreationalistsappears to be more a matter of procedural fiat than statutorymandate. While the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreations Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan 2005-2009 indicatesthat significant increases in outdoor recreation activities inVermont, and calls for further increases in a wide variety ofoutdoor recreation opportunities, it makes no mention of theincreased incidences or costs of emergency medical and search andrescue response to match that increased use. U.S. Forest Serviceplanning and evaluation documents also reflect increases in a widevariety of recreational uses of the Green Mountain National Forestlands, with no plan for the funding or additional services neededfor injured or lost recreationalists. Someone needs to take a real hard look at this, said MikeCannon of Colchester Technical Rescue. When a call comes in, isit a missing person, like a law enforcement situation, or someonein need of rescue? New Hampshire and Maine for backcountry rescuemandates the warden service, and those people spend a lot of timein the woods. It s frustrating. Fish and Wildlife are far bettersuited to do outdoor search and rescue. Other states have figuredit out. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Welding Rotator , Power Trowel, and more. For more , please visit Pipe Welding Rotator today!
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