MIDDLETOWN — Emergency personnel successfully located a missing Clearlake man early Saturday morning after a 10-hour search and rescue operation coordinated by the Lake County Sheriff”s Office (LCSO).
Deputies responded to the Harbin Hot Springs area of Middletown on Friday around 7:15 p.m. to investigate a report of a man yelling for help from somewhere in the surrounding wilderness northeast of the resort.
A Harbin Hot Springs employee had reportedly searched for the man, but then stopped looking because of darkness and called the LCSO.
While deputies began searching the area on foot, the sheriff”s Search and Rescue (SAR) coordinator began calling in resources for an SAR mission. Trackers, K-Corps members and four-wheel drive teams were summoned to the area, and a California Highway Patrol (CHP) helicopter with night-vision equipment was requested.
A CAL FIRE battalion chief who had been monitoring radio traffic also responded to assist the deputies with a preliminary ground search.
LCSO deputies and the CAL FIRE battalion chief could hear the man yelling from the wilderness intermittently for several hours as they tried to pinpoint his location.
A CHP helicopter out of Napa arrived in the area at around 10:30 p.m. and conducted a 40-minute aerial search but then had to return to base for fuel.
Shortly before midnight, an LCSO patrol sergeant encountered two men in a vehicle on Big Canyon Road who stated they were looking for their friend. The two had reportedly ventured into the wilderness with John Mark Sharp, 59, of Clearlake earlier in the day, but had lost track of him sometime after 2 p.m.
The two men left the area Friday afternoon thinking Sharp had gotten a ride home, but after several hours passed and Sharp had not returned home, they decided to return to the area and look for him.
Shortly before 11 p.m., SAR volunteers formed five search teams along with a four-wheel drive unit and were deployed into the search area.
Nearly two hours later, the CAL FIRE battalion chief located Sharp, who was dehydrated and appeared to have sustained head trauma in a fall.
A CAL FIRE engine crew and medic reached the two, but Sharp could not be immediately transported from the area because of the terrain. Air support was determined to be unavailable until daylight.
Two fire crews from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Konocti Conservation Camp in Lower Lake were then dispatched to the area to clear an exit route for the missing man and his rescuers.
CAL FIRE successfully removed Sharp from the wilderness at around 5:15 a.m. Saturday.
Sharp sustained minor trauma to his head and ankle during a fall down an embankment, but was otherwise unharmed. He confirmed his friends” story about how he got lost, telling officials he had gotten separated from his friends, and then became lost trying to find them.
Sharp was transported by ground ambulance to the St. Helena Hospital Clear Lake for further treatment.
