Off Road Rescue Unit - Emergency Call-Out Reports

Off-Road Rescue Unit - Emergency Incidents Report - 2005
No.	Incident / Location	Date	What Happened
30/2005	Missing hijack victim Bronkhorstspruit	29 Dec	In the final call-out in the busiest year yet for the Off-Road Rescue Unit, members assisted the police in a two-day search in the Bronkhorstspruit area for a woman who was missing after her hijacked truck was found crashed and empty. Read more about this call-out here.
29/2005	Boy missing in mine dumps Boksburg	28 Dec	At 04h33 a Code Yellow was issued for a search for a missing 8-year-old white male in the Boksburg area. At 04h50, a Code Red was issued for a search on old mine dumps. Read more about this call-out here.
28/2005	Assistance with stuck vehicles Johannesburg	22 Dec	In a further development of the ongoing search for a woman washed away in recent heavy storms (see story here) the police vehicles pumping out a mine dam became bogged down in the mud and called the Off-Road Rescue Unit to assist.
27/2005	Search for missing child Randfontein	22 Dec	A 13-year-old female had gone missing near Randfontein and there was reason to believe that she may have fallen down one of the old mineshafts in the vicinity. The police asked for assistance in searching the broken ground and old open cast mine workings. A number of ORRU members were available, but were not mobilised as further information became available that first needed to be assessed by the police.
26/2005	Search for missing woman South Hills Johannesburg	19 Dec	A woman in her mid-thirties, suffering from depression and apparently suicidal, left her sister's house in the early hours of the morning and could not be found by family or police. ORRU responded to a call-out in the afternoon, and large areas of open veld and steep ground were searched with the use of parachute flares. Read more about this call-out here.
25/2005	Search for missing child Devland Johannesburg	3 Dec	An 8-year-old girl was abducted from outside her home at 12h30 on Friday. ORRU was called out by the SAPS during the night and after generating maps of the area from satellite photographs, a three-car team assisted the police with an off-road search of a large area of open veld, but without success.
24/2005	Search for flood victim Booysens Reserve Johannesburg	26 Nov	A 46-year-old woman had been crossing a stream in the Booysens area south of the Johannesburg CBD on Friday evening. The water was flowing fast and she was swept off her feet and away into an underground drain. Read more about this call-out here.
23/2005	Search for missing child Eldorado Park Johannesburg	30 Oct	For the third time in a month, another child had gone missing in Eldorado Park. After a search over a wide area south of Johannesburg, the missing child was located unharmed. Read more about this call-out here.
22/2005	Search for missing child Eldorado Park Johannesburg	15 Oct	For the second time in a week a child had gone missing in Eldorado Park. After the previous week's search had ended in the tragic discovery of missing child's body, there was even more dedication to finding this missing 6-year-old girl quickly. Read more about this call-out here.
21/2005	Search for missing child Henley-on-Klip Gauteng	14 Oct	An 11-year-old boy had left a note and then run away from home. The police helicopter searched the surrounding farmland with a FLIR camera and found nothing, so ORRU was called out to assist. After many recent searches had ended in tragic outcomes, this one would play out on a much happier note. Read more about this call-out here.
20/2005	Missing woman Johannesburg	08 Oct	A resident of Rosettenville caught a bus to the Jo'burg CBD on Saturday morning but failed to return. ORRU was placed on standby to assist the police to search for her in rough terrain if necessary.
19/2005	Search for missing plane Nelspruit Mpumalanga	07 Oct	A Cessna had taken off from Nelspruit Airfield at 15h00 on Friday, bound for Johannesburg. Weather conditions were poor and when the plane failed to complete the journey the alarm was raised. ORRU was called out three hours later and a team drove to Nelspruit through the night and began searching at first light. The wreckage was located at 11h00 on Saturday morning near the top of a mountain. Read more about this call-out here. Read a letter of thanks from a family member here.
18/2005	Search for missing child Eldorado Park Johannesburg	07 Oct	A 6-year-old girl had gone missing from her home in Eldorado Park at 15h00 on Thursday. The community and police searched a koppie and veld behind the girl's home without success and ORRU was called out at 02h30 on Friday to assist. A large area was searched, and her body was found at daybreak. A murder docket was opened by the police.
17/2005	Missing helicopter George	03 Oct	A Red Cross helicopter flew to Haarlem near Uniondale in the Western Cape to fetch a young girl badly injured in a car accident. The chopper took off at 20h30 for a 30-minute flight back to George, but never arrived. The Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre called out ORRU but the wreckage was located before going to Code Red. There were no survivors.
16/2005	Police assistance East Rand	01 Oct	East Rand police had been given the GPS coordinates of a property at which they needed to conduct a criminal investigation. T50 Alan assisted the police to make sense of the cryptic coordinates, and with the correct information the police raided the property, making several arrests and recovering a large sum of money.
15/2005	Search for missing quad biker Pretoria West Gauteng	10 Sep	A quad biker was out riding trails in a disused sand quarry west of Pretoria in the evening. In the dust and poor light, he fell into a donga and was reported missing when he failed to return. The Rescue Unit was called out to assist the police, Mountain Search and Rescue and K9 Search and Rescue. Read more on this incident here.
14/2005	Assistance at fire scene Walkerville Gauteng	26 Aug	Every year, the Highveld August winds coincide with the end of long dry winters, and in these circumstances a stud and game farm south of Johannesburg found itself surrounded on three sides by raging fires fanned by strong winds. When two fire-fighters went missing, the Rescue Unit was called out to assist. Read more on this incident here.
13/2005	Three missing persons Mpumalanga	07 Aug	Three government workers went missing near the Strydom Tunnel in Mpumalanga, one of them injured. An ORRU team of three cars was dispatched to drive the 400km to the area. All three workers were found.
12/2005	Missing man Kromdraai	28 May	A man went missing in the Kromdraai area. He was found lost in the veld.
11/2005	Motorist missing after hijacking Pretoria	15 May	A motorist had advertised his car for sale and went for a test drive with people posing as potential buyers who then hijacked him. His body was found near Tarlton.
10/2005	Search for missing teenager Poortview Gauteng	14 May	A teenage schoolgirl had run away into the bush near the Witwatersrand Botanical Gardens. When the police had not been able to find her by nightfall, ORRU, Mountain Search and Rescue and the K9 Search and Rescue units were called out to assist. Some teams combed the steep hillside while others searched the WBG and local nightspots. The girl had been hiding nearby and emerged unscathed the next morning.
9/2005	Search for missing schoolboy Loskop, Mpumalanga	01 Apr	A Pretoria school was running an Easter holiday three-week cross-country trip involving hiking, cycling, canoeing, etc. On Day 11, one of the boys was not making good progress. The master in charge of the group detailed another boy to accompany him and tasked these two to take a short-cut(!). The two got separated and one failed to turn up. Read more on this incident here.
8/2005	Search for missing motorist Midrand, Gauteng	27 Mar	It's not unusual for things to go wrong in wilderness areas when city-dwellers head out into this big country on Easter long weekends, but sometimes you can get into trouble in the suburbs too. ORRU was called out by the police to assist them in a search for the missing driver of a car that had been involved in an accident. Read more on this incident here.
7/2005	Search for missing hiker Magaliesberg North West Province	20 Mar	An 85-year-old man had gone walking alone in the Magaliesberg Mountains on Sunday. When he was reported missing on Monday morning, the alarm was raised and a search and rescue call-out was issued. Read more on this incident here.
6/2005	Traffic Accident Johannesburg	16 Mar	Two vehicles collided off-road. The patients were extracted.
5/2005	Search for missing person North Rand Gauteng	12 Mar	A young woman had been reported missing overnight by her house mates, and then her abandoned car was found alongside a freeway. ORRU was called out and members interviewed anxious friends and family, gathering clues and information for the police, and then conducted an intensive search of the area. Read more on this incident here.
4/2005	Missing Person West Rand Gauteng	24 Feb	A 78-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer had been missing for 24 hours. Nine cars from the Off-Road Rescue Unit were assembled in the search area within a short time and, before the search could even commence, a second call-out was on the way for a potential suicide in Mpumalanga. It was about to become a busy night... Read more on this incident here.
3/2005	Missing Person Mpumalanga	24 Feb	A despondent Johannesburg man had left a note and gone to the Drakensberg mountains near Waterval Boven. A search was launched by the local police and his body was found before the departure of the ORRU teams.
2/2005	Vehicle Recovery Midrand Gauteng	14 Jan	The driver of a Lada 4x4 had attempted to cross a small river in Midrand, but had become stuck when the car's engine was flooded. Two ORRU members responded and winched the Lada out of the water and towed it to the owner's home. Read more on this incident here.
1/2005	Missing Motorist Witkoppen Road Johannesburg	09 Jan	A low-level bridge was flooded after heavy rain and the road was closed to traffic. Despite being warned not to cross the bridge, a female motorist went ahead into the water and the vehicle was swept away downstream into the night. Her body and the vehicle were found later some distance from the bridge by K9 Search & Rescue and recovered. See pictures of this incident here.

Links to other call-out reports: