Motorists driving along East Emmaus Avenue may have noticed Eastern Salisbury firefighters carrying a litter out of the wooded slope area of South Mountain across from the former Allentown Goose deli and wondered what was happening.

It was just a drill but an important one for firefighters to be able to respond to accidents or missing persons on the tricky terrain of South Mountain, or the area of the township along Constitution Drive, which is heavily sloped, but a magnet area for mountain bikers and hikers looking for challenging terrain.

"We had to do a rescue along the Constitution Drive area last year and it was a long, difficult challenge," Eastern Salisbury Fire Captain Bob Curcio said.

Besides the sloping terrain, underbrush and briars present their own problems along with the physical challenge for rescuers of carrying a person on a backboard litter, Curcio said. The scenario for last week's training exercise was that a person was missing on South Mountain and needed to be located and transported out of the wooded area before darkness would complicate the issue.

ESFD Deputy Chief Dennis Takacs hid himself in a thicket before the exercise started and the rescuers' task was to find him, secure him to a backboard and carry him out. Although Takacs was well hidden, he was spotted by a fire department searcher and secured for the carry out of the woods. Rescuers carried a thermal imaging camera to aid the task if the visual search stretched into dusk and darkness. The camera sees the heat image of a person, and appears as a bright image in the darkness. The camera is used to help in fire rescue and smoke conditions, and to isolate hot spots in walls or behind obstruction in a fire situation.

Firefighters were grateful the exercise was conducted in lightweight brush fire turnout gear. Search and rescue in heavy protective gear in anything but the coldest weather can quickly sap a firefighter's strength and diminish effectiveness.