Scout leaders leave them cellphones alone

[RememberSchiff]

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/131424653.html

 

Group of scouts get lost on trip, they hunker down and await rescue...search helicopter lands and rescues them, all is well except (last paragraph)

 

"Rock County sheriff's officials said the scout leader had taken the boys' cellphones so they wouldn't get lost in the river. If the boys had had them, officials said, they would have been able to call for help or emergency officials would have been able to trace the phones' signals."

 

Apologies to Pink Floyd,

 

 

[lrsap]

But...but...but....Baden Powell didn't have a cell phone!

 

I know it can be pure folly for one to say "This is what BP would say about this!". However, this is the man who said to be prepared "..for any old thing". I could just see him saying "Let me get this straight. One of the most valuable pieces of wilderness survival equipment was on the person of these young lads, and you took them from them because you were afraid they would get wet? How about we stop molly-coddling them and teach them waterproofing techniques and responsibility?".

 

The thing about this specific situation is it really isn't about the typical "Scouts & cell phones" debate that many good, heck great Scouters find themselves on opposite sides. Since they were left at the campsite, that decision was already made.

[Basementdweller]

Instead of focusing on the boys doing the right thing and actually being prepared, we focus on the leaders taking the cell phones. Good job boys........

 

This is similar to the boys that got separated backpacking in North carolina....they stopped setup their tent, ate dinner, slept, packed up in the morning and were hiking out when they were found.

 

 

[frankpalazzi]

One cell phone held by an adult would have been sufficient.

[perdidochas]

The real problem was that the group should never have left the portage until the whole group was accounted for.

 

IMHO, the missing boys handled it well-- "At about 1 a.m., the crew of a helicopter from the Illinois Department of Transportation located a campfire in the woods along the river, a couple miles north of the Wisconsin-Illinois border." They stopped, hunkered down, and were rescued.

[Twocubdad]

It's difficult for me to get excited about the cellphones one way or the other, given the usual degree of precision found in daily news reporting. "Taken" doesn't necessarily mean "conficated" but could very easily mean "was holding for safe keeping."

 

The only better outcome would have been for the scouts to tell the S&R guys, "no thanks, we'll paddle out in the morning."

[Twocubdad]

... Or to have been quoted saying, "GPS is for wussies."

[Eagledad]

There is a popular debate in the motorcycle community right now about using brakes with the ABS (Anti-lock Braking System). Many experience motorcyclists believe that practicing and using the brakes without ABS correctly is safer than developing habits of relying on brakes added with a new complex computer system that could fail. I listen to folks on both side of the debate and wonder why so many folks think in terms of either/or? Being prepared is learning how to use all the tools available. A leader doesnt have to take away a scout's knife to teach him the safe and proper use of an axe.

 

Barry

 

[Beavah]

The real problem was that the group should never have left the portage until the whole group was accounted for.

 

Yah, gotta agree with perdidochas here.

 

I do worry a bit that the pervasive availability of cell phones starts to become a standard of care, eh? As more and more parents/citizens expect kids to be electronically tethered to them, that developing community norm becomes the standard by which scouters are judged to be responsible (or negligent).

 

An interestin' question to my mind is also when to call for outside help. Four well-equipped and experienced scouts being out for a night perhaps doesn't constitute an emergency, eh? At least not one that requires the diversion of thousands of dollars of resources, hundreds of hours of professional rescuer time, and the attendant risks associated with a high-stakes nighttime SAR operation.

 

Beavah

 

[rdclements]

perdidochas is right, separating the group was the real problem. Of course, had the scouts taken their phones on the river and lost them, the parents would be demanding that the SM pay them for the phones.

[CalicoPenn]

Frankly, this story is disturbing for reasons well beyond cell phones. To echo Beavah, 4 well-equipped Scouts without a cell phone seemed to get rescued just fine - and while the point that if they had one, they might have been found sooner is taken, that's provided of course that the batteries hadn't worn down and that the Scouts were just lost and hadn't ended up in swamped canoes with everything wet. It still wouldn't have prevented a search party, but it might have happened sooner.

 

What's disturbing is first, peridochas point that somehow they left the portage area without accounting for all present - though I suspect that what happened is that the two canoes (4 scouts = 2 canoes) were present and accounted for after the portage but lost sight of the canoes in front of them in a river system that south of Sugar River Park (just north of the IL/WI border) has fairly close set bends and plenty of opportunities to turn off a main channel. Once into Illinois, there are fewer opportunities to get sidetracked onto a side channel. If the Scouts were founf about 2 miles north of the IL/WI Border, and they had been paddling most of the afternoon, and not just lollygagging around, they likely hit one of the side channels that took them on a dead-end run.

 

Second, if the report is correct (and the media often have a way of getting things wrong so it may or may not be), they Troop was on the river with ONE Scout Leader. Now maybe the unit was counting people transporting equipment as part of their leadership for the outing as a whole, but there really should have been at least 2 leaders dedicated to being in the canoes. Of course, having a second adult leader along may or may not have prevented it anyway, but it is another set of eyes.

 

Third, and most disturbing - once they discovered the 4 boys missing, why did they wait to contact the authorities until after they arrived at their destination? It's not like the river is 100 miles from anywhere in that part of Northern Illinois. There are plenty of opportunities along the Illinois stretch of the river to find a place to contact the authorities and get a search started - only then should you head down to your final destination. It's all well and good to paddles back upstream to see if you can find the Scouts but unless you explore the side channels yourself, you won't likely find them - and it assumes they are still actually in canoes afloat and not on a bank somewhere with someone hurt, or assumes that they haven't swamped.

 

On the other hand, we should be ready to count this as a success for the BSA program as well - sure, there were some failures along the way, but these 4 lads did excatly what we teach as part of wilderness survival - stay where you are and light a fire to stay warm and signal for help. Good job, Scouts!

[JMHawkins]

perdidochas is right, separating the group was the real problem. Of course, had the scouts taken their phones on the river and lost them, the parents would be demanding that the SM pay them for the phones.

 

Not in our troop. We make it real clear to the parents that the Troop is not responsible for the gear the scouts bring. "Scouts lose stuff" the gear handout says. "The smaller and more expensive, the more likely they seem to lose it." We make the point that it's their responsibility to keep track of their own gear. We'll pick something up if we find it and bring it to Lost-n-Found at the next meeting if nobody claims it, but that's a bonus for the scout who lost it.

[RememberSchiff]

Sheriff's report http://www.nbc15.com/janesville/headlines/Four_Boy_Scouts_Rescued_Along_Sugar_River_in_Rock_County_131413423.html

 

"From the Rock County Sheriff's Department:

 

On Saturday, 10/08/11 at 2213 hours, deputies from the Rock County Sheriffs Office received a call for mutual aid from the Winnebago County Illinois Sheriffs Police in locating four missing boy scouts last seen on the Sugar River in Rock County around 1330 hours. Fire and rescue personnel from Albany, Brodhead, Orfordville and Town of Beloit also responded to search the area for the boys.

 

The investigation shows the boys, ages 12-13 from the Mendota, Illinois area, were canoeing with their boy scout troop, which included approximately 14 other scouts and a scout leader. The troop launched canoes at the DNR grounds located at 17305 W. Beloit-Newark Road in Avon Township around 1100 hours. They stopped on the riverbank to eat lunch just before 1300 hours and portaged their canoes shortly afterward, somewhere west of Sugar River Park, located at 11317 N. Nelson Road.

 

After portaging, the troop continued downstream to Sugar River Park where they noticed the last two canoes (with the four boys) were missing. The troop waited approximately hour and the boys still hadnt caught up to them. The scout leader and another canoe left the rest of the troop at Sugar River Park as they went back upstream to look for the boys. After searching the area of the river, which is very winding, complex and remote, the scout leader returned to the rest of the troop thinking it was possible the missing boys could have gotten out ahead of them after portaging. They continued downstream to their destination at the Winnebago County Forest Preserve in Illinois, where they planned to camp overnight, and when they arrived they realized the boys were still missing. The Winnebago County Sheriffs Police was contacted at 1900 hours and an extensive search began upstream.

 

Rescue personnel from all Rock County agencies used johnboats and ATVs searching the area downstream, which is very thick and dense with foliage. At approximately 0108 hours on 10/09/11, a helicopter from Illinois Department of Transportation located a campfire in the woods along the river, approximately two miles north of the state line in Rock County. The chopper landed in a nearby field and the pilot walked out to escort the boys to safety. The boys were not injured and were flown to the Shirland Illinois Fire Department where they were turned over to family members.

 

The missing boys likely took the wrong bend in the river after portaging and easily became lost trying to navigate their way around unfamiliar waters. Once darkness set in, they were unable to navigate any further so they got out of the water, started a campfire and waited for help to arrive. The scout leader had taken the boys cell phones earlier in the trip, as he didnt want any of them to lose their phones in the river, so they were unable to call for assistance.

 

The Rock County Sheriffs Office strongly urges people to use caution anytime when setting out on unfamiliar waters. In this instance, if the boys had at least one cell phone with them, not only could they have called for help immediately after losing their way, but also a trace could have been done on it to pinpoint their exact location as soon as the emergency call was received."

 

ROBERT D. SPODEN

SHERIFF

[Eagle92]

While I have not been in that exact situation, I've been in a similar one. My canoe did get separated, not only from the rest of my group but also from my buddy canoe. Due to the winds, rain, waves, and other issues, we ended up about an hour or so behind. One thing that helped was that we were told roughly where we were going prior to launch and we pushed on. BUT it would have been better to have a map of the area in each canoe to know exactly where we were and how much further.

 

Luckily all ended well, but it could have been worse as I did get hypothermia from getting out of the canoe, and towing it on the islands along the way to the camp. We had to "island hop" b/c we couldn't handle the waves.

[sailingpj]

That seems like a perfectly reasonable chain of events.