Successful Queenstown Coastguard Search & Rescue Exercise
Mark Whitehouse, Coastguard Operations Manager says “From my perspective as exercise director the exercise was a resounding success and helps reinforce how well all the search and rescue agencies work together to reach a common goal of saving lives”.
Mr Whitehouse said that this was as far as he was aware the first time that a Search & Rescue Exercise (SAREX) of this nature run in Queenstown involving the numerous search & rescue agencies.
The scenario was a realistic one in that a Helicopter took off around 7am on Saturday hoping for a break in low fog around the area (notational weather) so he could drop some fishermen on one of the local rivers. At 0800 the helicopter company reported the aircraft missing to the Police who are confirming various details passed on Lead Agency to the New Zealand Rescue Coordination Centre (RCCNZ) who are responsible for this type of incident.
There was notational fog in the area so air assets could not be used in the search.
Working with the RCCNZ the NZ Police tasked various Search and Rescue Agencies i.e. Coastguard Queenstown, Coastguard Clyde, Wanaka Marine Search and Rescue and the Local Land SAR units to assist them in the search for Helicopter. 50 Volunteers in all were involved including 2 Coastguard Rescue Vessels and 3 civilian vessels from the Wanaka Marine Search and Rescue Unit.
An Incident Control Point was set up at Queenstown Police station with members from all the agencies working together in the Incident Management Team (IMT) to coordinate and manage the search for the missing Helicopter.
As more information came (not all of which was correct) into the IMT an Incident Action Plan was drawn looking at the most probable scenarios that could have happened and using limited coverage from communications in the area tasking was relayed to the Coastguard and other rescue vessels on the water and SAR teams on the ground.
Marine assests were used to search the water and shore line and were possible LandSAR teams were taxied over to areas to search on land.
After 5 hours of searching the ‘missing’ helicopter was found and its occupants were located around Pigeon Island on Lake Waktipu. LandSAR used a tracking dog to locate the last person and the mission was complete around 1600 hrs. Some of the vessels traveled over 100 Nautical Miles over a period of 8 hours during the search.
The main issue everyone had to deal with during the exercise was the very poor communications in the area and the possibility of obtaining more VHF repeaters in the area will be considered.
NZ Police then laid on a BBQ for all participants and following a debrief and much networking all agencies returned safely home after a job well done.
