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Editorial: Grant Condon

As the fire danger passes, those who have lost so much are understandably desperate to return to their former homes to see what can be salvaged, and to begin to process their loss.

On 25 January 2020, a young mother and father returned to their destroyed home on their 88-acre bush property at Waterholes, north of Bairnsdale in East Gippsland, to begin this process when they were suddenly faced with the loss of something far more valuable than any possession.

As the father headed off to survey the damage, the parents believed their four-year-old son was safe. The father thought the boy was with his mother, the mum thought he was following his dad doing the inspections. When they reunited, they realised they were wrong.

Their son was missing, alone in the blackened landscape.

After their hurried search failed to locate their son, the parents alerted Bairnsdale police.

“Following a devastating bushfire, usual landmarks are impacted, causing confusion,” said Acting Sergeant Matt Webb, who led the Search and Rescue (SAR) team that responded.

“Damaged and destroyed buildings and fences look very different or are simply gone, there’s no foliage or undergrowth in the bush, animal or human pathways through the bush are gone and thousands of burnt tree trunks are still standing or lying scattered on the ground.

“Everything in sight is black and it all looks the same. The bush is seemingly lifeless.

“It is no wonder that a four-year-old boy trying to catch up to his father would lose his way, and not be able to find his way back. Efforts the boy made in trying to get back would very likely be taking him further away.”

Once alerted, Bairnsdale police launched an extensive search.

While the fire ravaged environment added significant hazards, with damaged and falling trees the primary concern, one beacon of positivity was the number of emergency services personnel that were nearby, with firefighters and Australian Defence Force troops joining police in the search.

The SAR squad was initially deployed as a dive team after a police canine gave a very strong indication that something was in a small dam on the property.

While the search continued in bushland into the evening, the dive team undertook the grim task of searching the dam for a body.

They did find a body, that of a wallaby that likely used the dam to escape the flames, but nothing else of note. With the dam searched and cleared, focus went back to finding the boy in the burnt bushland, with over 200 people from a variety of organisations and specialist police units on site the next day.

Around noon, about 24 hours after the boy first went missing, a search group calling his name got a reply.

The boy emerged from behind a log, which he had used as a shelter overnight. He was found about two kilometres from his last known location in good health.

Positive outcomes like the one at Waterholes in January can often be viewed as lucky, a case of a searcher stumbling across the missing person by being in the right place at the right time.

However, in most searches, Victoria Police is relying on a lot more than just good fortune. The Australian bush is vast, and resources to search it are limited. Important decisions need to be made to achieve a successful outcome.

As part of the Sergeant Qualifying Program, emerging supervisors receive training in the management of missing person reports, including follow-up investigation and search efforts.

It’s important training – each year Victoria Police receives more than 8,000 reports relating to a missing person. This equates to more than 150 reports each week, with this figure increasing over recent years. Of those reported missing, about 44 per cent are found within 48 hours.

“Many people reported missing are not lost,” Search and Rescue Squad Leading Senior Constable Jason Ball said.

“Some are missing as a result of crime, while many others have simply decided not to return home to loved ones or carers. Most are reported missing in urban or semi-rural areas and the vast majority are located.”

On most days, there are more than 20 reports involving people deemed ‘high-risk’ because of their age, medical conditions, mental health, injury or the circumstances in which they have gone missing.

For these circumstances, the SAR squad has developed a high-risk missing person guide that is available to all police officers.

The guide gives police a breakdown of missing person trends divided into age groups, illnesses and health problems, and outdoor adventure; the latter covering the likes of climbers, hikers, hunters and prospectors.

In total, there are 15 categories of missing persons and the guide provides the characteristics and tendencies people within a category might exhibit, as well as tailored strategies police can implement to locate them.

Ldg Sen Const Ball said the information is based on research conducted by various agencies including SAR and some interstate and international jurisdictions. From the thousands of searches for missing persons, comparisons are made between where the person went missing from, to where and how they were located.

“No two missing persons cases are exactly alike,” Ldg Sen Const Ball said.

“But there are trends that we have identified, and these give police a starting point to guide initial actions.

“The guide gives frontline police clear strategies and techniques they can apply, which is important as the pressure of time during a search can be immense. Police are also quite often managing patrols and distressed family members at the same time.

In the Waterholes search for the young boy, police used statistical data of missing person behaviour to form the basis of early search efforts.

As detailed in the guide, missing children aged 4-8 years will attempt to return home and will panic, often causing them to become lost further.

They tend to seek out a place of shelter such as thick bushes, tables or old vehicles, are difficult to detect and will rarely attempt to self-help. More than a quarter are located under cover or in a building or shelter, and 75 per cent are found within a radius a little over 2km from their last known location.

“We tailored the search as more information came to hand but for Bairnsdale police to have that knowledge as soon the search began was pretty important,” Ldg Sen Const Webb said.

“The boy displayed most of the tendencies detailed in the guide and that shows how important having basic knowledge right across the entire police force can be.”

Narre Warren Sergeant Olivia Wright is another officer who knows the importance of police receiving missing persons training, having conducted a similarly urgent search earlier in the 2019-20 summer.

A 75-year-old man with severe dementia had disappeared from his care facility in the mid-afternoon of a 41-degree day in December, dressed in a full tracksuit and with no means of communication.

The man’s care facility was in a suburban area and adjacent to a large park that included a creek.

“In some cases, those factors would make the search area quite large. But having done the training, I knew most missing persons with conditions such as dementia are found within around a kilometre of their last known location,” Sgt Wright said.

“I also knew that people with these conditions will often follow the route of least resistance. This means if they come to an intersection on their path, they’ll choose the easier option, like going downhill instead of uphill.

“That meant I kept the search quite contained and instructed my team to follow easier routes when searching.”

After more than three hours of police searching, the man was found in the backyard of a property he had no connection to, less than half a kilometre from where he was last sighted.

He was unconscious and laying fully dressed in the blazing sun, but paramedics were able to assist him.

One of the high-risk missing persons guide’s key strategies suggests police search private yards because people suffering memoryaltering diseases will often seek a secluded location. A quarter are found within 500 metres of their last known location.

“The man was very ill when we found him, but thankfully he was still alive and this gave some relief to his family,” Sgt Wright said.

“Police get many missing persons reports, but cases as high-risk as this are not that common.

“It was fortunate we were prepared and well trained and it’s extremely pleasing we were able to get a positive result.”