TWO men who became lost during a hike in the Northern Range on Friday evening were rescued by officers of the Fire Service’s Land Search and Rescue Unit, with assistance from the National Operations Centre’s (NOC) Air Division.
The two men, Nyron Oudit, 31, and Sharad Lalla, 32, were part of a church group on Friday evening who met a hiking group which was moving through a mountainous and densely wooded area behind Mt St Benedict in St Augustine.
According to fire officers, Oudit, Lalla and another man broke away from the hiking group, opting instead for their own trail, but it was while proceeding through the trail, they became lost after one of the men slipped off a precipice.
Around 7:10 p.m., someone from the other group of hikers telephoned Mt St Benedict and told them of the missing three men.
An off-duty fire officer who worships at the church then contacted the Fire Services’ Rescue Unit and they in turn contacted the National Operations Centre (NOC) for air support.
For almost an hour and a half on Friday night, NOC’s Viper Two hovered over the mountain that separates St Augustine from St Joseph, and using its night sun and infrared (IR) capability on its air asset, which according to NOC, assisted in leading to the location of two hikers who were rescued by a ground search party, the NOC said in a statement yesterday. (Trinidad Express)
