Additional manpower was requested from the crew on Thursday, July 3rd for a search and rescue operation in Damascus. The SRT team was activated and responded 44, 45, and 51 with the boats and 53 to the scene. Upon arrival command assigned crew members to search and drag the lake for possible victims. Hours of searching produced no results and the victim was later found by personel searching on the ground. The victim was evaluated by crew ALS providers.

A news clipping of the event is posted below.

By Debra McCown
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: July 3, 2008

DAMASCUS, Va. – It was a message radioed to flashlight-toting volunteers and even aircraft helping in the search for a lost Grayson County, Va., man – look for a white bucket.

Miles Roger Dolinger, 49, said after he was found on Thursday that he’d carried the five-gallon bucket containing salt for his friend’s cows all the way up the mountain and back.

Dolinger was looking for lost cattle when he too became lost and spent more than 26 hours in the woods at the Beartree Recreation Area.

He said he walked a bit and slept some during the night.

“I ain’t gonna lose no more cows in the woods,” Dolinger said Thursday, but added about a night spent alone in the woods without a flashlight, “It didn’t bother me a bit.”

According to a Washington County Sheriff’s Office news release, Dolinger, of the Pond Mountain community in Grayson County, was found unharmed near the Shaw’s Gap Trail at approximately 3:30 p.m. Thursday.

Kenneth Kilby, the friend, said he and Dolinger had come to get the cattle, which had wandered about 10 miles from Konnarock.

“We found them down here,” Kilby said, “and we were attempting to drive them back home, back to Konnarock.”

Kilby said while he and Dolinger were bringing the cows along a road, the animals ran into the woods.

“He lost the cows and went in to drive them back to the road, and he got turned around,” Kilby said. “He went up the mountain, up Iron Mountain, instead of coming back to the road.”

Dennis Ely, incident commander for the search, said about 100 people helped to scour the woods for Dolinger, some with dogs, and they covered more than 1,000 acres of woodland before Dolinger was found.

“You look every possible place a person could be and places they couldn’t be,” said Nina Cipriani, president of Intermont Search and Rescue, which is based in Damascus.

Cipriani said members of her organization did some walking – and plenty of crawling through thickets.

“He got lost in one of the worst places he could get lost in,” Ely said. But, he added, “These were the perfect conditions for someone to be lost and survive. If it had been wintertime, he most likely would not have survived the night.”

Ely said such searches happen in the region about five times a year on average, though it varies from year to year – and 60 percent of the lost people are found alive and well.

Kathy Grace, a member of the Black Diamond Search and Rescue Council from Smyth County, Va., said Dolinger loves to walk. “They said he could out-walk a cow, so we knew we were in trouble,” she said.

The search involved fire departments members from Damascus, Mount Rogers, Abingdon, Green Spring, Glade Spring and Bristol, as well as members of the Bristol, Va., Glade Spring and Washington County, Va., lifesaving crews.

It also involved Black Diamond members from Smyth, Tazewell and Wise counties, as well as the Damascus area, the Red Cross, MedFlight and the Tennessee Special Response Team from Church Hill.

Search dogs came from sheriff’s offices in Smyth and Grayson counties, as well as from the North Carolina Search and Rescue Dog Association and Dogs East, of Louisa County, Va.

“It went like clockwork,” Grace said of the search. “It was perfect.”

She and Ely said Washington County Sheriff Fred Newman was the first person on the scene in an official capacity, and he stayed through the night.

“Fred Newman made certain we had everything we needed,” Ely said.

Rescuers had plenty of food and water, access to communications equipment, deputies to contain the area and alerts were sent out for volunteers to assist, he said.

Newman could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday evening.

In the news release, Newman thanked the many volunteers from the various agencies, adding, “It’s always good when a search of this duration ends on a positive note.”

Miles Dolinger’s brother, Garney Dolinger, said he’s relieved his brother was found.

“Thank God and thank everybody for their help and support, and I’m glad everything turned out like it did,” Garney Dolinger said. “There was a lot of people worried about him, and everybody in Konnarock and Whitetop pretty well knows Miles.

“Out here in these woods, it’ll put the fear in you knowing that someone’s lost. When they couldn’t find him, I really thought something was bad wrong.”

dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701

Taken from: www.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/man_lost_in_mountains_found/11309/