Ocean City Maryland beach hummer accident

[Hummoron]

WHat you probably don't see is that they sent several trucks which were cancelled by the first arriving unit when they arrived on scene with no smoke showing. Sometimes the alarms gets reset before the engine arrives. The engine should continue to check while the rest of the incoming units get cancelled.

No, I can assue that no other trucks were sent. They might be in the station ready to go, but they don't leave.

[Marcmedic]

I agree, that the search would have been very difficult. Who knows, they may never have found them even with help. It doesn't excuse a lack of effort though.

[Marcmedic]

No, I can assue that no other trucks were sent. They might be in the station ready to go, but they don't leave.

I'm glad you can see their station from your office.

[Hummoron]

Someone stuck in the sand vs. someone screaming in the background after a distress button was pushed should have provoked a different response.

I didn't read where the 911 operator passed that information (someone screaming) along.

While Adam and Jenn were not, a lot of drinking, hollering, and junior behavior goes on at the beach.

“We didn’t receive a discernable response,” said Terry Sullivan, vice president of communication for OnStar. “The advisor indicated that he thought he heard a woman’s voice, but the sounds are unclear.”

Could have been a lot of things. We know different, now.

[Hummoron]

I'm glad you can see their station from your office.

I can.

[Marcmedic]

OnStar: My name is Walter. I do have a connection with the vehicle, however, I’m not getting a response. It’s fading in and out, and I do hear screaming inside the vehicle, but I don’t know what the actual emergency is.

they were unable to locate the source of the distress call reported by OnStar, and the search was ultimately called off after several hours.

[Hummoron]

I agree, that the search would have been very difficult. Who knows, they may never have found them even with help. It doesn't excuse a lack of effort though.

But they did search. They searched the most logical places based on the ranger's past experience. Had they been in the ORV section, they would have been found lickity split. They weren't there. It was dark.

I must be wrong, but I didn't think it was that uncommon to cancel a search until conditions changed (such as becoming light) if the initial search didn't find anything.

[Marcmedic]

OK, we'll try this one more time.

Could have been a lot of things. We know different, now.

This has no bearing on their duty to act. They have a responsibility. So did the Sheriff's department that cancelled themselved off of the call. I'm sure they'll be mentioned in the lawsuit also. Just because it could be something else doesn't relieve you of you duties. Plain and simple.

[Marcmedic]

And when the search in the logical places didn't turn anything up another call should have been placed to OnStar to check the status of the vehicle and the search should have been expanded.

[Marcmedic]

I give up, I'm going to bed. BTW, all the guys here at the staion wish there were more people out there like you who wouldn't hold us accountable so we could get more sleep at work.

[KenP]

Asked by hummoron:
Do the hummers have black boxes to record the driver?! That could really shed a lot of light onto this.

Are you reading the posts? About 3" above your comment was this:

However, I just want to know exactly what happened. I hope the HUMMER's black box was not damaged. That will be telling.

Posted by the OTHER shaggy:
Maybe they DID PERFORM their duties, looking where they SHOULD have been looking, I don't know, see this is all BS, and maybe getting a little PO'd, and for the recird, have no connection personally with the rangers, other than fishing, but check the layout of AI, and the regulations, and where would you look?

According to the coordinates givin, the water.

OnStar provided rough coordinates — 38.21 latitude and -75.14 longitude — to the 911 operator, but those numbers were not passed onto park rangers at the time.

Moving down the line I can't help but admire the response of marcmedic. He is willing to take responsibility for actions he does, or does not take

You dive in and knock yourself out. Is the lifeguard justified in just sitting there and letting you drown because you disobeyed the sign??? The Park Rangers has a duty to act and their actions deviated from an accepted standard for emergency responders. You bet your ass they should lose their jobs.

Posted by the other shaggy:
Okay, and imagine there is diving allowed in certain areas, and none in others, and imagine the pool is 10,000 acres or more, where would you start looking?

I would start looking where the mayday coordinates dictated.

Posted by the moron:
From what I've read, the rangers did search, just didn't find them. I'm sure that if they did, they would have done all they could to save them.

Again, here are the coordinates: 38.21 latitude and -75.14 longitude. The coordinates are outside the designated offroad area so why was only the legal Offroad Area searched? The motion of the waves geanerally moves objects north anyway. Any ambiguity as to where the vehicle was should lead an experienced Ranger to check north.

Postd by themoron:
They searched the most logical places based on the ranger's past experience. Had they been in the ORV section, they would have been found lickity split. They weren't there. It was dark.

Wrong, they did not search the area of the coordinates provided by OnStar.

It seems that a few new members are jumping in here without reading the entire thread. Furthermore, they are not reading all the info available to them in this thread.

Most here are not castigating the Rangers or the Troopers. If you newbies would read EVERYTHING before posting you would see most of us are merely curious as to the truth.

Posted by the moron:
Should the ranger have called for a full blown search and rescue when all he was given was:

“The incident we have is going on at the National Parks Service,” the 911 operator informed an Assateague Park ranger. “An emergency button was pushed to OnStar on a vehicle that’s a Hummer somewhere out there and they gave us coordinates, but we have no idea where this is.”

The GPS coordinates makes this response sound elementary. Actually, it's sad.

Postd by Pebbles:
Does anyone know if they found the Hummer at or near the GPS coordinates that Onstar relayed to Emergency Services?

What were the actual coordinates the Hummer was at when it was found?

Good question. Let's see. An CYA out there?

Posted by the moron:
From the emotions here, I should be looking for someone's head if that ever happens. Maybe I should start demanding that we get a full fledge response each and every time.

Wrong again. We are merely trying to find out the truth as to what happened by sharing information. As for this incident, let's see. OnStar button pressed, hysterical woman, coordinates in the water. Humm, you aren't that bright are you, hummoron? If nothing else, a man's machismo should demand finding that woman. I guess we know where you stand. If I knew a woman was in danger I'd do anything I could to find here. Even following coordinates.

Of course, I must reiterate, I am not blaming the Rangers. Generally, they do a wonderful job. I just want to know what happened. Plain and simple.

[KenP]

Posted by the moron:
But they did search. They searched the most logical places based on the ranger's past experience. Had they been in the ORV section, they would have been found lickity split. They weren't there. It was dark.

No, they did not. The coordinates offered to them is where the search should have started.

Now if I am wrong, then I will have no problem apologizing to all involved.

Again, I just want to know what happened with the rescue effort and what caused the roll.

[dochummer]

Didn't they have the vehicle's number? Could they have called it to follow up on the vehicle themselves?

[H2Finally]

Marcmedic, forget it. Hummoron is not interested in a logical answer. He just felt really bad for being an insensitive moron earlier on. Now he needs to feel better about himself. Therefore, he will continue to argue to the death the syntax of his opinions, since they are the excuse for his earlier assholic posts.

All I can say is if I ever do something stupid and needed serious help, I hope to God I reach emergency personnels with your attitude, and not Hummoron's.

Thanks for doing a good and noble job!

[KenP]

Ditto H2F.

[tower]

Clearly, some of you don't quite understand the way a search works. When a call comes in, an Incident Commander is assigned. It is usually the highest-ranking officer available. He has a scribe, whose job it is to record, on paper, all actions and communications involved in the search as well as the time these occur. He also has assistants assigned to him and he chooses a site commander (the person in charge "on scene", who dispatches everyone there.

The first step is called the bastard search. All of the expected places are checked. This includes bathrooms, restaurants, coves that people frequent. Simultaneously, the assistants are gathering information: cell phone numbers, OnStar numbers, home & work numbers, local accommodation numbers. All of these are called. As much information as possible regarding clothing, ID, provisions and experience of the lost people is gathered and collated. After all this is done, if the person has not absolutely, positively been confirmed as found, what do you think happens?

Well, what is supposed to happen is a full-blown multi-agency search with all available resources begins. Why? Because the standard is that the search continues until those lost are rescued or recovered.

What actually did happen? Somebody said, “Aw shucks, it's a big area to search, it’s late, they're probably gone by now anyway.” No verification of whether or not that was the case. This violates the most basic principles of the search and is the DIRECTLY ATTRIBUABLE cause of these people not being found until they had expired. This sort of assumption is LETHAL and a total F.U. to lost public taxpayers.

When I hear the lame excuses asking "Why didn't someone say longitude and latitude coordinates instead of just coordinates" or "well maybe the ranger didn't have GPS" or how far from the coordinates were they found?" it makes me want to scream. Any ignoramus ranger knows what coordinates are. They all have GPS, and if they don't or don't know how to use them, THEY NEED TO ESCALATE THE SEARCH TO A HIGHER AUTHORITY! When you ask, "What's the Sheriff going to do? Roll a squad car on the sand?" Respectfully, that's none of your damned business!" You have no idea what airships the Sheriff has at his disposal or what interagency agreements exist. NONE OF THIS JUSTIFIES CALLING OFF THE SEARCH. A search NEVER gets called off because someone thinks they're probably okay or gone. This MUST BE VERIFIED and was not. When I hear you say, "They looked in the most likely places" I want to say yes, and they didn't find them. This is like ‘looking for a coin you lost 4 blocks away because the light is better over here.’

Bottom line, this isn’t a question of poor judgment and is not open to conjecture. The wheel doesn’t get invented from scratch when a missing persons call comes in and people don’t sit around and guess what they think happened and they don’t vote on what to do. There are strict protocols to follow and they were not followed. It is entirely possible that, because of this, two young people are dead. NO MORE B.S., NO MORE EXCUSES!

[Hummoron]

quote:
Asked by hummoron:
Do the hummers have black boxes to record the driver?! That could really shed a lot of light onto this.
Are you reading the posts? About 3" above your comment was this:

KenP, I was asking my question in direct response to the post above. I hadn't heard anyone mention the hummers having a black box before, hence my "?!" and the end of sentence. I was surprised. Obviously I don't know all the wonderful details about your chosen vehicle. I was further admitting that it could be a great tool to clear up what actually took place.

[beachinJeeper]

Okay, since the moderator is apparently going to close my account, this is probably close to if not my last post on the subject, but have enjoyed my brief stay here, and mostly see intelligent posts on the accident, even though obviously differring views, and appreciate the mostly civil nature of the replies here. That said, I will try and shed a little more light before being booted.

During the striper run at AI, it is usually only fishermen out on the beach at night, and as said, many of us are out there 2-3 days at a time. From personal experience it seems at night there is usually two or three rangers on duty during the night (probably more scheduled come June when the tourists and school kids arrive, but that is when most of us fishermen find other spots until mid September).

Generally, before dark, most of us find our night time fishing spot and for the majority stay until it gets light out, so patrolling the beach is a fairly easy deal.

Now, as stated before, and know little about GPS, andnot knowing the need of the OnStar operator to give seconds in the co-ordinates, which apparently were not given, and using mapquest, best I could do, seems the co-ordinates give locations from just west of Berlin, MD into the ocean.

Another thing I thought of is "where actually was the vehicle found"? Might have been in the State portion of the Park, and maybe the rangers did check the National Park area, finding nothing, if just driving up and down near the water's edge, might take an hour and a half or so.

Like I said, does not appear all facts have been release about this event, so we are only coming up with scenerios as to the hows, whats and whys.

Anyhow, thanks for letting me share, though to many, my opposing thoughts, and in closing, drive responsible and smartly, because whether Hummers or Jeeps, we are all off roaders, so same family, just different personalities.

Be safe, no need to make people think all offroaders are jerks or idiots, which for the record, as a majority, we are not, we are responsible and appreciate and take care of what areas to have fun on are open to us.

Just in case my account is closed though, goodbye. If not, if I hear of any more relavent facts, I will let ya'll know.

Have Jeep will travel.

[ROX]

Quote by Shaggy:Just in case my account is closed though, goodbye. If not, if I hear of any more relavent facts, I will let ya'll know. UnQuote:

This is the Hummer Forum! You can't get kicked off here! Don't pay any attention to Alec; he's still confused and thinks your the other Shaggy! Don't leave! We need intelligent people to add to the discussion (even if they drive poo-poo Jeeps ) You have to say a lot worse than Linda did to get booted. Maybe Stripersonline should think twice about why they did that because it's obvious some of you were interested in the investigation. That's okay, we'll take you and we're glad to have you here.

[beachinJeeper]

Gee, and I just figured the real reason he wanted me gone was that I drive an '87 Jeep Wrangler, and not my name, cause this is a Hummer board, but thanks H2 Rocks, me just wanting to find the facts, and give what info I can about AI and the rangers.

Can't respond about Linda's post, since it was deleted before I read it, but will say stripersonline is just a bunch of fishermen with four wheel drives that, well hang out and fish. Just seems many times things happen, and the consequences are less than appealing to us. Maybe part of our fear is, enough happens there, we lose our priveledges to fish all night, may be selfish, but that is our escape, and night time is the right time for fishing, just not the time for learning the beach. Also, I believe after dark, people on the beach must be actively fishing, not real sure there, might just be a reference to the fact that no sleeping on the beach after dark, but dozing off during sunlight hours while tanning is permissible.

Have Jeep will travel