In a rapid, precise rescue, a satellite-detectable emergency Personal
Locator Beacon (PLB) alerted authorities to the desperate plight of an
elderly man stuck in snowy, rugged terrain.
Novice off-road driver, Ken Cohen, 65, readily admits that
overconfidence and inexperience factored into his recent desperate
situation in the high, snowy wilderness of southern Utah. When he set
out in his Jeep on December 30th to explore promising ATV trails, he
brought a sandwich, carrots and raisins, a cell phone and, fortunately,
a recently purchased PLB.
When his vehicle spun into a ditch at a 5,866-foot elevation, Cohen
quickly realized that he was in a circumstance well beyond his
expertise. He had no cell phone coverage and a spinal condition hindered
him from hiking out. Having no water, blanket or other means of
self-rescue, he activated his ACR Electronics’ TerraFix 406 GPS PLB at
12:30 p.m., and prayed that help would arrive.
“The fact is that I’m a novice off-roader. I know my own limitations. I
knew I couldn’t have walked out of there. I was 20 miles from the
nearest city. I knew the degrees were going to be in the teens and
twenties that night,” Cohen said.
Within 15 minutes, Cohen said his wife, Rita, received a phone call from
the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) and she confirmed that
her husband was driving on Veyo Shoals Creek Road. The AFRCC then
notified the Washington County Sheriff’s Office of Cohen’s location and
a deputy was dispatched to Cohen’s GPS coordinates. The officer found
Cohen, pulled his vehicle back onto the road and drove it down for him.
The entire rescue took one-and-a-half hours.
This was the first PLB rescue for the Washington County Sheriff’s
Office, according to Chief Deputy Robert Tersigni. “The GPS location
(from the beacon) took us right to him. It worked out good,” Tersigni
said.
Cohen is a retired physician who relocated from New Orleans to St.
George, Utah after Hurricane Katrina. He purchased his ACR PLB in the
fall of 2006 when his wife learned about beacons on a TV news interview
with outdoorsman Aron Ralston last summer. “As soon as I heard about
PLBs, I knew I needed one,” Cohen said. “It’s my inseparable companion.”
Cohen calls his experience a humility lesson. “I’ll tell anybody: I
don’t care how experienced, how young or how well equipped you are, you
must be nuts to go out without a PLB. I was so astonished. It was
remarkable how it all worked out.”