Another interesting Crisis call – 04:00 am of a Sunday (mass day) morning.
A foreign national Boy and Girl are missing for the last 6 hours. In the ‘jungles of Arambol, Goa’. Last location available is a deserted Shiv Temple.
Search starts….. Locals, Police, ISAPL.. Pressure from Embassy, Family, Insurance company.
Police too is invoked. Police inform back that their search parties had failed since 11:00pm. ISAPL (Delhi HQ) draws a strategy to identify and form appropriate teams at Arambol, Goa.
Multiple teams approach the Jungle / Hill / Dam from 3 sides. Mobiles signals are pathetic. In between, we get connected to the couple. Without food / water and warm clothing. They cannot identify any landmark around. Shrill voice of the girl ‘I am hungry and tired. Exhausted. Cannot walk.’ Two hours of meticulous trekking and Tracking. The temple is empty and no one around. Searched the 400 mts periphery for traces live / injured / sick / dead….
switching between Hope and Misery…
Our Director Operations Ms. Poonam could zero down on another temple, some 2 kms away. The search parties are redirected towards that. Here is hope. One of the teams could connect with the couple and instructed them to climb down the hill thru a particular pathway. All goes well for 10 minutes as we are about to accomplish the mission. But, they loose the direction yet again. Vanished. Jitters and worrying.
All this while Police is still wandering around and seeking updates from ISAPL.
Now, Ms. Poonam, at Delhi Command Center, directs all the teams to close-in towards that location. Such an obvious looking rescue. But, then we were leveraging simple locals who are not ‘search-rescue’ trained / experienced / equipped. The mobile signals and directions had their own share. Ms. Poonam knows it the best.
Look at their smiling faces, telling the tale !
We at ISAPL “Humane to those in Distress”.
