Baoshan dementia man lost contact for 12 hours, thermal imaging drone went deep into the valley and successfully found him

Hsinchu County fire and volunteer firefighters used land and air to conduct a joint search and rescue, and finally found my grandfather who had been missing for 12 hours. (Provided by Zhu County Fire Department)

An 80-year-old grandfather with dementia in Baoshan Township lost contact after leaving home alone at around 5 o'clock this morning. His family searched for him on their own to no avail, and called for help from the Baoshan Fire Brigade in the afternoon. Firefighters teamed up with volunteers to carry out a joint ground and air search and rescue. The ground rescuers first found a slipper left behind by Grandpa and suspected that he had slipped into the wild stream. After grasping the clues, Yixiao used a thermal imaging drone to assist the team, and went deep into the mountain forest where the wild stream is located with complex terrain. Sure enough, they found my grandfather in the downstream valley who was exhausted and had been out of contact for 12 hours. Fortunately, he was conscious and was rushed to the hospital. It was initially determined that there was no serious problem.

The county fire department stated that they received the report at 3:33 this afternoon, found Grandpa from the air at 5:57, rescued him from Yexi Valley, and sent him to the hospital for observation by ambulance at 6:21 pm, which took less than 3 hours. The key is that after the Baoshan fire brigade arrived at the scene, they conducted a joint ground and air search. One group worked with family members and police officers to search deep into the bamboo forest, while the other group cooperated with the rescue drone and used a thermal imaging drone to search from the air to expand the search range.

During the search, ground personnel first found a slipper suspected to be that of Grandpa near a bridge above Yexi River, and there were suspected signs of someone slipping next to it. Rescuers immediately focused on the valley and areas around the Yexi river as key search areas. Sure enough, when the thermal imaging drone gradually searched downstream along the Yexi Valley, it finally returned the figure of grandpa. Ground search and rescue personnel immediately rushed to the scene based on the aerial search results. After confirming that grandpa was conscious, everyone lifted him up and evacuated him to a doctor.

The county fire department stated that this was the result of a successful cooperation between the fire department, volunteers, and the police. Faced with the challenges of complex mountainous terrain and difficult valley searches, ground personnel searched for clues and cooperated with the volunteer fire drone team to use thermal imaging equipment for aerial exploration. Only in this way can the location of the missing person be confirmed in the shortest possible time and help him escape.