Coast Guard rescues missing woman shouting for help in Oregon wilderness after multi-day search
A hiker was rescued Sunday from an Oregon state park where she had been missing almost two full days, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The 64-year-old woman's calls for help caught the attention of search and rescue crews that had been looking for her.
The woman showed signs of hypothermia and dehydration when a Coast Guard crew and ground search party located her in a remote area of Shore Acres State Park, according to the agency. Whether she suffered additional injuries was not immediately clear.
Oregon State Police asked the Coast Guard for help when the woman went missing Friday evening. She became separated from her group that day without proper survival gear.
Members of a county rescue team and regional task force joined the Coast Guard in its search for the missing hiker over the weekend, but their efforts were temporarily stalled by challenging weather that grounded the flight crew. They were also unsuccessful trying to locate her using a thermal imaging device on one of the Coast Guard helicopters. They later realized the woman was undetectable on infrared cameras, which should be able to pick up body heat signatures, because she sought shelter beneath a log.
Crews searching on land eventually found the woman in an isolated section of the park after hearing her call out for help. She began shouting once she heard helicopters flying overhead.
After bushwhacking through uncultivated wilderness, the ground team found the woman, the Coast Guard said. That team moved her to another location where the flight crew had a clearer path to hoist her up.
Video of the air rescue showed the Coast Guard helicopter lift the hiker on a stretcher from the forest below. She was covered by a hypothermic bag and by then had been warmed by a fire that the ground search team built while they waited for the flight crew to arrive, the agency said.
The Coast Guard flew the woman to Bay Area Hospital in North Bend, Oregon, nearby. She was transferred at that point to emergency medical services personnel.
"The Coast Guard and our partner agencies here on the Oregon Coast routinely train together to ensure we can execute coordinated search and rescue missions whenever we're called upon," said Jay Kircher, a commanding operations officer and helicopter pilot at Coast Guard Air Station North Bend, in a statement about the rescue. "It's fantastic to see this teamwork in action and produce a successful outcome."