search rescue italy — Public safety

The call came in at 21:40 with a last-known position on a north-facing slope above the tree line. Cloud base was at 1,400 metres and the two walkers had been missing for six hours, so a visual search from the air was going to find nothing — the thermal camera was the point. A thermal-equipped platform was launched from the valley station, climbed to 2,600 metres on the upwind side and ran a racetrack pattern over the slope, with the pilot using the thermal image as the primary navigation cue rather than the visible scene. Both walkers were located within 25 minutes of the second launch, sitting under an emergency bivvy about 400 metres below the search grid. They were cold and hypothermic but alive, and were walked out the following morning. The operational lesson was that thermal search works in cloud but needs a clear thermal contrast, so the search pattern had to be flown close enough that a warm body was still distinguishable from the cold rock face.