ST. GEORGE — Unlike the previous two years that saw jumps in search and rescue calls in Washington County, 2022 wasn’t as busy.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team responded to 119 callouts and accumulated 8,000 man-hours between rescue operations and training, Washington County Sheriff’s Sgt. Darrell Cashin told the Washington County Commission during its Jan. 17 meeting.

“I’m hoping this year isn’t another busy year,” Cashin said while expressing hope that numbers stay down for 2023.

Cashin has overseen search and rescue operations in the county for the last decade and recalled when having around 100 callouts for the years was considered “busy.”

While search and rescue numbers were gradually increasing year over year, the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 brought record-breaking numbers with them. Moving toward the 2020s, 2019 saw 130 callouts, with 2020 jumping to over 170 calls and 2021 ending with around 150 calls.

The spike in incidents during the pandemic years has been attributed to masses of out-of-state visitors wanting to engage in outdoor recreation that had been locked down in their native states but remained open in Utah.

During that time Cashin started keeping track of how many incidents the search and rescue team responded to involved people who lived outside of the county. So far, its been around 60%, he told the commission,

“That seems to be holding steady year to year,” Cashin said.

As a part of Cashin’s monthly report to the commission, he touched on the most recent search and rescue incidents, some of which have been “very, very hard” on search and rescue team members, himself and others.

The last call of the year sent the county search and rescue team to Colorado City on Dec. 20 where they had to retrieve the body of a man who had fallen through the ice and drowned while trying to save the family dog.

The first call of the new year came on Jan. 1 and involved stranded motorists who had gotten their vehicle stuck in the snow while on a backcountry road. While that can be routine for the search and rescue team during winter, the next call-out was not.

Search and rescue volunteers responded to the report of a plane crash in the area of New Harmony and took part in retrieving the body of the pilot, Cashin said.

“They can’t all be a happy ending,” Cashin said while speaking to St. George News following his commission report.

Additional calls between Jan. 7-14 involved the retrieval of lost and injured hikers in various spots around the county and utility-terrain vehicle riders at Toquerville Falls who had been stranded due to rising waters.

While some of the recent calls didn’t have the best outcome, a call last year that the county’s search and rescue team responded to went flawlessly and garnered the praise of a neighboring county’s search and rescue officials.

On Sept. 19, 2022, the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office contacted Washington County for aid involving a 60-year-old hiker in the Cedar Pockets area of the Virgin River Gorge. The man had become stranded due to rising river waters, The hiker had crossed the river earlier that day only for it to rise between 1,500-2,000 cubic feet. He had no food or shelter available and a new storm was on the horizon.

The Washington County Search and Rescue swift water rescue team reached the stranded hiker much sooner than Mohave County would have been able to and brought the man back across the river without incident. When the outcome was reported to Mohave County, they thanked Cashin and his team for a job well done.

“It was nice to hear from my peers in Mohave County go, ‘Are you kidding me? You guys rock!’” Cashin said with a smile. “This is the pinnacle – to have a neighboring or fellow (search and rescue) team go, ‘You guys really know what you’re doing and you guys saved us.’”

Referring to the search and rescue volunteers next, he said, “They want to hear the ‘thank you.’ They don’t care about anything else.”

As for why the search and search calls were down compared to the two years before, Cashin said it is likely a mix of far less visitation and people actually being prepared for an outdoor excursion.

It is commonplace for search and rescue volunteers to respond to cases where people did not adequately prepare and had to call for aid. This has led Cashin to repeatedly advise the public to make sure they have enough water, dress weather-appropriate and let someone know where they are going before heading out.

In addition to a lower call volume, the county’s search and rescue team saw an increase in volunteers and four new sheriff’s deputies assigned to the team. This has helped spread the work around and has provided Cashin with something he hasn’t had much of for at least nine years: time off.

“It’s been a load off of me,” he said, adding he had basically been on duty 24/7 with the search and rescue team since being assigned to it. “Now we’re on rotation. Each of us (deputies) takes a week.”

The new deputies were added in late 2021 to patrol the county’s backcountry while also seeing to law enforcement needs with the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. They also were added to the search and rescue roster and “have worked out awesome,” Cashin said.

A compensation system for search and rescue volunteers also was approved by the County Commission as a part of its 2022 budget. This, combined with the addition of the new volunteers and deputies, has helped in decreasing the burnout Cashin said his people were beginning to experience in 2021.

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