
Volunteers scour drone footage in search for woman who went missing on hike - curtis
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/volunteers-scour-drone-footage-online-search-woman-went-missing-hike-north-seattle/
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TekMol
In the doc where the findings are documented, someone wrote this for video
DJI0015:

    
    
        5:09 - 5:24	at 5:09 two vertical rocks pan onto the screen, which appear to
        be part of a small natural shelter, and are visible in the center of the screen
        until 5:24. There appears to be movement in this area/shelter, at first I thought
        it was the light hitting the rock, but the movement looks intentional and the spot
        moves away from the rock. waving motion being made from about 5:13 through 5:24 when
        the camera pans away from the spot.
    

I looked at it a couple of times now, and indeed it looks like some waving
motion. What can this be? I have no idea what size the rocks are. Can this
'shelter' house a human?

~~~
anotheryou
I see it, but I think the motion looks more like something swaying in the
wind.

I marked it in a screenshot here:
[https://i.imgur.com/w38bGrR.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/w38bGrR.jpg)

link to the scene here:
[https://youtu.be/gNZa8Ug-e40?t=309](https://youtu.be/gNZa8Ug-e40?t=309)

~~~
dTal
I've replayed the video about a dozen times now, and I see absolutely nothing
where you marked - nothing that moves, and nothing that looks like a shelter.

There is a small judder, when the camera pans, which I attribute to a
compression artifact.

It's difficult to tell the camera scale from the images, but judging by the
tufts of grass (and the balloon earlier in the video) that area is quite small
- those rocks are perhaps the height of a human. I would think that a shelter
would be very obvious at that scale.

<edit> I see the movement now, after kicking up the resolution on YouTube. The
scale is more obvious with hi res as well. I'm definitely calling it a blade
of grass.

~~~
EdwardDiego
I can see it when I full-screened the video on a 1920 x 1080 display.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yup, clearly visible on full-screen at 2650x1440; in windowed standard YouTube
size I couldn't spot it either. Doesn't look like a compression artifact to me
(though there is an artificial-looking jump at the exact moment the
camera/drone rotates).

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pmoriarty
This reminds me of a similar search, maybe 10 years ago, for a tech employee
and his family.

His car and his family were eventually found (from inspection by volunteers of
aerial footage), on an old, abandoned logging road. Unfortunately, he himself
had walked away from the car, seeking help, and did not survive.

~~~
datalus
Was it James Kim?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim)

~~~
creep
Ah jesus, that is terrible. He believed he was 4 miles away from a town called
Galice. How could this be?

I have gotten lost on several poorly-maintained roads in my time in the
Canadian rockies. To think this could happen to me and the people I'm with
makes me feel ridiculous and stupid.

What should a group of people do if they found themselves in such a situation?

~~~
jrnichols
Always stay with the vehicle. He set out to try to find help, and
disorientation and delirium set in with hypothermia.

~~~
curtis
Kim did stay with the vehicle (and his family) for something like a week
before going for help. I think this might have been the right decision at that
point, because his youngest child was 7 months old and would not have been
able to survive without food nearly as long as an adult would.

Kim's wife and children did stay with the car and were rescued some time
later. But at the point that Kim left the car he had to be thinking that
searchers weren't going to find them in time.

I've often wondered if Kim's fatal mistake wasn't leaving for help but rather
leaving the road he was on and going cross country. By the time he made the
decision to do that, his thinking might have been very seriously impaired
indeed, though.

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xae342
It’s been a while since I’ve gone backpacking, but especially if I went solo
I’d bring a locator beacon these days. [https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-
advice/personal-locator-bea...](https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-
advice/personal-locator-beacons.html)

~~~
EdwardDiego
I always carry one when tramping or hunting, especially solo, but the caveat
is you have to be able to activate them - as most fatalities in the New
Zealand bush are caused by falling (then drowning, then hypothermia), they're
less helpful when the person is severely incapacitated.

Sadly, if this person has been missing 30 days, probably the best bet of
finding them is a cadaver dog - our SAR volunteers use them.

~~~
SkyPuncher
Seems like it'd be smart to have a version with a "dead-man timer". Something
like every X hours a beeper goes off and you have an hour to actively interact
with the beacon (button, pin code, etc)

~~~
learc83
The false alarm rate would be way too high to be use useful just from people
losing them. Maybe if you built it into a bracelet or anklet that's hard to
take off, and there was a huge penalty for a false alarms?

Also if something happens to incapacitate you for several hours out in the
wilderness, you'll mostly likely be dead before help arrives--even with a
beacon.

A locator that can be remotely activated (periodically wakes up to check for
an activation signal) could be pretty useful, but I think it would mostly be
used to locate bodies. Requiring solo hikers to carry something like that
might be good alternative to parks requiring rescue insurance.

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dddw
more backstory [https://medium.com/@iandustinscofield/lost-in-the-
mountains-...](https://medium.com/@iandustinscofield/lost-in-the-mountains-
lets-find-samantha-sayers-424e50b29f0d)

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stephengillie
Where is the AI that would scour these videos instead of humans?

~~~
j7ake
AI is good for convenience and expediency, but when it comes to thorough
searching of a video for another human being, nothing yet beats humans.

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projektir
I'm reminded of that time when someone's child (?) got lost at a concert and
there was a forum trying to find them. Don't recall the name or how it ended,
though.

