Thinking about survivability figures when I did my Missing Person Training Presentation for ISIS SAR this week, and after my brief post questioning whether the police “suspend” vulnerable missing person search too quickly, I thought I would take a brief look at the figures I have available to me and look for any evidence.

In theory every ALSAR Unit should have completed a missing person’s stats form for EVERY search they have taken part in – the reality is that since 2003 we have fewer than 300 records; probably less than a fifth of all ALSAR searches carried out in that time.

However, I thought I would take a look at the ALSAR stats forms from 10th May 2003 till the 1st June 2008 to which I have access.

There were 275 records. The total man-hours involved in these searches was 20,880 – an average (mean) of 76 hours per search.

To put this is context; if you had 12 search volunteers for an operational period of 6 hours you would use 72 man-hours. This, then, could be considered an “average” search. Many searches will last less than this with the misper being found earlier, some longer – as greater time and effort is required to find the misper.

59 of these searches were recorded as “no trace”. The stats then can be split into “found” and “not found” – the figures for which are below;

Found, 216 searches, 12954 man-hours, with a mean search time of 60 man-hours.

Not found, 59 searches, 7926 man-hours, with a mean search times of 134 man-hours.

As you would expect, searches without a trace, seem to take nearly twice as long.

However, the figures aren’t as clear cut as they may at first seem. The “not found” figures are skewed by a couple of very large searches. One very large search is recorded as 1988 man-hours, with another one at 524 man-hours. Three searches put in over 300 man-hours, four in the 200 man-hours range and fourteen in the 100 man-hour range.

Again, putting these into context, if you had 2 shifts of 12 volunteer searchers searching for 6 hours they would put in a total of 144 man-hours.

However, to my mind it is the 36 searches which lasted less than 100 hours that might be a concern, and especially the 22 searches that put in less than 50 man-hours of effort and were suspended with no trace of the misper found. There may be reasons – new intelligence from the police etc. however in these cases no reason is recorded in any of the notes section on any of these searches.

In searches lasting under 50 man-hours with no trace found, there were 15 despondent mispers, 2 with dementia and several more marked as “elderly”. ALSAR does not historically track any of its incidents, but I really hope that none of these mispers is still missing having had less than 50 man-hours of searching done for them! Especially when you consider that in that same period ALSAR had 15 searches lasting over 100 hours where the misper has found alive – 8 of which were over 200 man-hours.

In 7 searches ALSAR Units spent over 300 man-hours searching resulting in the find of the body of a misper – allowing the misper’s family to start the grieving process and stopping some unfortunate dog-walker having to find that.

When do you suspend a search? It is the hardest question…