Man signaled rescue crews with fire, turned into forest fire
By Pete Carlson
On Saturday July 1 at 10:00pm a page
went out for a overdue hiker on the Skyline
Trail. Sean Stewart, 32, of Cathedral City, went
for a day hike up the Skyline Trail from Palm
Springs to the Tramway. He did not know the
Tramway was closed for maintenance work. He left
at 10:00 am on Sat. with 2 gallons of water and a
day pack. In the afternoon he ran out of water
around the 5,800 foot level. He then turned to go
down to Tahquitz Canyon to get water. He got lost
and spent the night out. The day time temp was
around 100 degrees and the night time lows where
around 70 degrees. The problem for everyone was
going to be the heat.
RMRU sent two teams up the Skyline
Trail starting at 1:00am. Around 3:30 a team of 4
members was at 4500 feet. There they stopped to
get a few hours sleep. A team of State Park
Rangers had started down from Long Valley, The
Tramway upper station, and stopped at 6,500 foot
level. At first light the RMRU team started up
hoping to find Stewart. The RMRU team found one
set of tracks going up that seem to match the
subjects. We got the CHP helicopter and they
pickup two RMRU members from the 4 on the tracks
and took them up to Long Valley to check for
tracks. Around 5800 feet the tracks left the
trail and were hard to follow. Two more RMRU
members were taken from Base up to the 5800 foot
level by helicopter.
We also had the 4 Hemet SAR people
who were sent to the lower tramway to check
bottom area in case the subject had tried to hike
down under the tramway. We also had the Desert
SAR team with us. We got 7 of the Desert Members
ready to be flown in on a ridge area above
Tahquitz Canyon to descend into the Canyon by
different routes and look for tracks. The Tribal
Rangers who patrol the bottom of Tahquitz Canyon
also were very helpful and sent one of their
Rangers up with the Desert Team Members to help
them find the best places to go and avoid the
hard places.
While we were flying them onto the
ridge the Helicopter spotted smoke from the
Canyon bottom. As we all watched from base the
smoke turned into an out-of-control forest fire
within 2 minutes. The CHP helicopter spotted
Stewart by the edge of the fire but could not
find a place to pick him up. As the CHP
helicopter returned to base we contacted CDF and
the air tankers at Hemet-Ryan airport to start up
and come put out the fire.
The CHP came back to the Landing
Zone and pulled all extra gear out of the ship
and prepared their long line to try and lift
Stewart out on a 100 foot steel cable. Within
minutes they were back in the air heading back up
the Canyon. They dropped the cable down to
Stewart with a full body harness on the end. All
he had to due was step into the body harness and
clip it shut. But the fire and smoke made this
very difficult. Stewart, clad in a Superman-logo
tank top, had to jump through some flames to get
the harness. He was into it in less then 60
seconds and they lifted him out. He got quite a
ride on the end of a 100 foot cable from the
canyon back to the Landing Zone.
They slowly put him on the ground as
RMRU members unclipped him from the Helicopter
and walked him to the Medics who checked him out.
The subject was out but we still had 8 SAR people
on the mountain above the forest fire. Again the
CHP bird quickly got ready and started flying
them out in groups of two.
In the mean time CDF was on
scene as well as 3 fire crews, two water dropping
helicopters and air tankers from Hemet-Ryan were
starting fire retardant drops on the fire. By
3:00pm all SAR teams were off the mountain and we
left the scene to CDF to get the fire out. They
were already getting it under control as we left.
The fire ended up burning at least 20 acres by
late Sunday.
This was quite a mission involving
multiple teams and at the end the CDF fire crews.
Everything went very well and everyone worked
well together. The CHP helicopter and its crew
did a excellent job in making this mission work
and pulling Stewart out of the canyon in the
middle of a forest fire.
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