A sheriff’s department search over the weekend for a woman who went missing at Amboy Crater near Amboy, California, failed to turn up any signs of her.
The remains of the woman’s husband were found in the area June 13 — about 10 days after the couple went missing.
Susan Schmeirer, 65, and William Schmeirer, 64, of Williamsburg, Virginia, were reported missing at Amboy Crater National Natural Landmark on June 13. The remains of William were identified this week, according to a report by the Virginia Gazette.
The Desert Independent reported details about the latest search:
By 10:30 a.m. ground temperatures hit 130 degrees and by 2:00 p.m. the ground temperatures reached 165 degrees with an air temperature of 117 degrees. Due to the hot temperatures by 10:30 a.m., the use of search dogs was terminated. The rough terrain and weather conditions disabled two sheriff’s department off-highway search and rescue vehicles.
A company from the couple’s home state also assisted in the search, reported WAVY-TV.
DroneUp CEO Tom Walker says its professional pilots took thousands of pictures — creating a 360 degree look for searchers in places they wouldn’t have been able to search alone.
“It is a very large area,” Walker said. “The area that we’ve been focused on is about 10 square miles, which is nearly impassible — rough terrain with temperatures reaching about 117 degrees.” […]
“When we went out and said to our top pilots in the fleet that we needed assistance. We had over 80 that worked around the clock, reviewing all of the data we were collecting,” Walker said.
Because of the dangerous terrain, sheriff’s deputies are discouraging people from conducting their own searches for the missing woman.
The sheriff’s department released a video-surveillance image of the Schmeirers at the Amboy Crater Natural National Landmark field office in Needles, California, during the late morning of June 2.
The Schmeirers were due to meet their daughter in Palm Springs, California, on June 2. The couple had a hotel reservation waiting for them in Palm Springs, reported the Hi-Desert Star. Deputies said they do not suspect foul play.
If Susan Schmeirer’s body is found, it would be the fifth fatality at Amboy Crater in less than a year. In late May, a man in his 60s was found dead on the trail, likely from a heat-related illness. A California couple was found dead near the trail in August, also likely from heat-related causes.
Amboy Crater is a 250-foot-tall extinct volcano a few miles from the Route 66 village of Amboy. It’s been listed for decades as a National Natural Landmark and is within the recently established Mojave Trails National Monument.
(Image of Amboy Crater near Amboy, California, by davelawrence8 via Flickr)
The situation is an ideal one for using drones with cameras. I take it the couple had a car to reach the crater. How far from the car was the husband’s body found? An intensive search roughly within the perimeter of a circle taking the car as its centre and where the husband’s body was found as the perimeter should, it seems, have found the wife or her body. Have those piloting the drones used infra-red as well as visual spectrum cameras – flying either at night or in the very early morning? When I was involved in kimberlite exploration in Africa, we used light aircraft fitted with cameras loaded with infra-red film, and they flew just after dawn, when the general ground areas were cool, but the damper kimberlite features would have retained more heat overnight from the day before. Thus the kimberlite features showed up against the general early morning background temperature. Would not a person – or a dead human body – also retain more heat overnight than the surrounding bare rock of the crater – and thus be identifiable by an infra-red camera? I feel the searchers should be given this suggestion.