Myrtle Beach Ocean Rescue said inspiration for new tool was Texas flood response
The ocean rescue division of the Myrtle Beach Fire Department recently launched a new tool to help them quickly file reports of missing persons on the beach.
The inspiration for utilizing this tool comes after the emergency response to the catastrophic floods in Texas, Myrtle Beach’s emergency manager Travis Glatki said.
According to local reporting from the Austin-American Statesman, volunteers and first responders were still searching for 160 people as of Friday morning.
“The inspiration I got it for and what my future goal is, especially with what’s going on in Texas, there’s more than 150 people still missing, right? So using this form, what we can do is document those missing people,” Glatki said.
Currently, he said that Ocean Rescue units in the fire department all have iPads equipped with the new tool, ReadyOp. The tool utilizes cellular data and allows responders on the scene to log specific data about a missing person when a report is made.
“The form is very quick, it’s not 100 questions, it’s just last known location, last time seen, and then as much information as possible that we can fill out,” Glatki said.
Some specifics include a new picture of the missing person taken directly using the iPad’s camera, exact GPS coordinates of the last known location of the person and a feature that shares that information with first responders immediately.
ReadyOp CEO Marc Moore said Myrtle Beach is the first municipality to ask for a feature that also stores photos of the parents or guardians of a missing child in the report.
“The way that they’re using it for Myrtle Beach, I’m going to be sharing that with our other clients, because what they’re doing is very innovative,” he said over the phone on Friday. “No one else has ever come up with that.”
The plan is for this tool to be ready to go for the worst part of hurricane season in Myrtle Beach, which historically has been in August and September.
“A lot of public safety organizations in the country, that’s what they’re primarily using it for,” Glatki said about the new tool. “Is like that big catastrophic event, and now you can document missing people that way and then adjust it to you found or you located the missing person.”
While a supervisor or someone from Ocean Rescue is filing out the form, Glatki confirmed that other members of the unit are beginning search efforts immediately.
“So the form could take 30 seconds to fill out, but even during that 30 seconds, yes, we do still have people looking,” he said. “They’re not just waiting for that form to be sent out.”
To his knowledge, Myrtle Beach is the only nearby beach community that’s employed ReadyOp.
