"Mr. Chapple, this is Special Agent Smith. I think I’m lost.”
It was 6 pm on a Saturday evening. My role as Director of the US Embassy Bogota’s Rescue Coordination Center in Colombia was never dull, that’s for sure.
“What do you mean, where are you?”
“That’s the thing, I went hiking with my son, a friend, and our dog this morning in the Chingaza National Park, and I got turned around.”
“How are you calling me right now?”
“I brought my Satellite phone. But I didn’t bring a map or a GPS or anything—it was just supposed to be a quick walk into the mountains during the daylight.”
Night had already fallen. I got no more usable information from him except that they were wet from the rain that afternoon, the temperature was falling, and his phone battery was about to die. It wasn’t enough information to initiate a focused search and rescue effort, but it was obvious the situation was deteriorating. As I activated our rescue center and initiated an immediate response through the Colombian Air Force, I couldn’t help but speculate on how this event could have been prevented or at least mitigated by implementing a few safety precautions.
How Can You Make Your Organization Safer?
Supervisors should know where their employees are at all time. Period. Full stop.
Had Agent Smith informed his supervisor where he was going to hike, the search would have been more focused and the group would have been found a lot faster. Also, had the supervisor had a pre-weekend safety briefing, inquiring where personnel where going and cautioning them to bring the proper equipment, this event might have been completely avoidable.
The easiest way to keep accountability of personnel is to establish a communications plan for travelers that establishes standard operational procedures such as:
1 Travelers need to inform their supervisors about their travel plans to include date, time, locations, and flight numbers.
2 Travelers should have emergency numbers for embassies and local police stations on hand prior to travel.
3 Travelers should notify their supervisors when they have arrived or if there is any change to their travel plans (such as flight cancellations).
4 Personnel traveling together should keep each other informed of their whereabouts and share phone numbers.
5 When travelers leave their hotel, someone in the traveler’s group and/or a supervisor must at least know the traveler’s destination, intentions, and an estimated time of return.
My experience shows that travelers are flat out not prepared to land in a foreign location. They usually fail to communicate in a timely manner when endangered, are ill prepared to recognize and quickly remove themselves from a deteriorating situation, and are quite often unfamiliar with their surroundings. As for supervisors, they are typically the last to learn that one or more of their travelers require assistance and are usually unprepared to effectively assist.
Knowing where your people are, recognizing early that they have become endangered, and receiving timely reporting are the most underlying principles of generating an immediate and appropriate response; one that will significantly increase the probability of saving lives. Unfortunately, these principles are often missing from company travel policies. Rather, the travel policies that I have analyzed over the years are often lengthy, well-written documents focused on administrative processes, approval authorities, and budgetary aspects. There is rarely any mention of accountability, even though this is paramount to safety. Accountability for business travelers is also a "Duty of Care" responsibility that if taken lightly or ignored by the leadership, could place a company in severe legal jeopardy.
In my professional opinion, all corporate travel policies and travel programs should be built around ensuring accountability for travelers or the organization’s leadership better have a very good incident or crisis response center.
In Summary
Fortunately, Agent Smith and his companions (with the dog) were recovered. Due to rain and fog, we were unable to use military helicopters until the following morning. Knowing that the lost personnel could die from exposure by then, we set up a forward rescue command post inside the national park. I called a Special Forces medic from the embassy, and we arrived at the park by 10 pm, and with the help of park rangers and the Colombian military we were able to locate the lost personnel around midnight, treating them for hypothermia and exposure.
The one good part of their communications plan was that Agent Smith’s satellite telephone was preprogrammed with our rescue center’s number, otherwise, this story would almost certainly have ended in tragedy as nobody from the embassy knew of the group’s plans to visit Chingaza National Park. In the aftermath of this incident, apart from lessons learned while working with an amazing team that saved three human lives (and a dog), my belief for the importance of personnel accountability among travelers was further solidified.
If you would like our assistance in strengthening your corporate travel policies and procedures or simply to look at your existing program, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will "bend over backwards" to help you. After all, effective travel policies and programs better protect travelers, promote early detection of travel anomalies, foster quicker and more effective responses to travel anomalies, and will most certainly contribute to saving lives.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I certainly appreciate your interest and support!
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