MUDDY CREEK TWP — More than 100 people worked together Thursday using boats, dogs and other equipment to search Moraine State Park for two missing campers.

Fortunately, Thursday's search was just a training exercise, but the scenario that the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources staff prepared was one that is likely to actually happen at Moraine or McConnells Mill state parks, assistant park manager Jake Weiland said.

At McConnells Mill, hikers frequently slip and fall on rocks near Slippery Rock Creek or Cheeseman Run and at Moraine people can get into trouble by walking onto unstable ice, getting lost or tent camping in prohibited areas.

During the summer, the staff that manages Moraine and McConnells Mill typically gets at least one call a week for a missing person or medical emergency, Weiland said.

“A lot of times it's someone doing something they should have avoided,” he said.

The drill was run by 25 DCNR staff who worked as the incident command and communications team. There were 92 registered emergency personnel participating, including volunteer firefighters, students, medical technicians, county deputy sheriffs, state police, state Game Commission and other specialty crews.

It was the third consecutive year that state park and forest staff in the region have organized a manhunt drill and the first in a Butler County park. Unlike the previous two drills, the teams Thursday were successful in locating one of the lost campers.

Shortly after 9 a.m. the group gathered at Bear Run boat launch and was briefed on the (fictional) situation.

A young couple, named Art and Kelly, who are not familiar with the park launched a canoe the day before from McDanels Launch on the North Shore. They landed somewhere in the park and set up a campsite. Art, realizing they had forgotten something, went out alone in the canoe. When he did not return for several hours, Kelly called a friend to express concern. After Kelly's phone battery died, her friend called 911.

For the purposes of the drill, Art was a mannequin on the bottom of the lake and thus was considered a recovery mission.

Kelly was a real person hiding somewhere in the woods and was considered a rescue mission. Teams of four or five people, some with search dogs, were dispatched to different areas of the park and were instructed to look for Kelly or clues as to her whereabouts.

The staff left several clues for the responders to find, including a parked car containing the couple's scent to be used by the dogs.

While search and rescue teams need to work quickly, they also need to work safely, Weiland told the group.

“Your safety comes first,” he said. “We can all be a little ambitious in these exercises, but bear in mind that the individual is safe.”

Chris Calhoun, assistant chief of Butler County's Team 300 Water Rescue, was directing the water recovery mission. They brought two inflatable boats, one belonging to Butler County Community College and one to Butler County. Two larger boats, owned by DCNR and the state police, used sonar to search the lake floor, while the inflatable boats searched for clues near the shore.

Team 300 usually gets called to four or five water rescues each year, Calhoun said.

They strive to be prepared not only for situations on Lake Arthur, but for emergencies on any creek or river in the region.

“Flash flooding is the number one disaster in Western Pennsylvania,” he said.

The members of the team are trained in swift water rescue, but also try to take out their boats at least once a month to train and stay fresh, he said.

Calhoun is also a professor at BC3 where he teaches courses in the parks and recreation program.

Four students in that program participated in the exercise Thursday, including Glenn Jones of Butler.

“It's a new experience, a chance to learn something, put another tool in my tool belt,” Jones said.

Parks and recreation is a two-year program, though some of the students may continue their education by enrolling in a police academy or park ranger training.

Steve Bicehouse, director of Butler County Emergency Services, said the county brought 40 radios to be used by all participants. It also brought boats, medical personnel and administrative personnel to assist the park staff.

The training allows the county personnel to work on communication and coordinating efforts on large-scale responses where there are numerous agencies involved.

“It's a chance to meet people and work with them and see how they do things,” he said. “We can always improve on what we do.”

The county owns and operates its boats, hazardous materials response and other specialty equipment as a part of the PA Region 13 Counter-terrorism Task Force. The equipment supplied to the task force, which responds to any hazards not just terrorism, is paid for by federal money, Bicehouse said.

There were four canine units being used in the drill. One belonged to the Butler County Sheriff, two to Allegheny Mountain Rescue and one to Slippery Rock Township Volunteer Fire Department.

Since many of its calls are to assist with situations at the state parks, the Slippery Rock fire department is in the process of training three of its own search and rescue dogs, Chief George Johnson said.

They hope to have the dogs certified and in use on actual emergencies by October, he said.

Unlike police dogs, the search dogs are just family pets that also know how to track a scent. They will not be trained to find illegal drugs or apprehend criminals.

“It'll just lick them when they find them,” he said.

At the end of the day, Weiland said the exercise went “exceptionally well.”

Though the crews did not find the mannequin in the lake, they did find Kelly the lost camper after locating several clues and tracing her scent with the dogs.

“It was a series of working together, finding clues, communicating the right way to the overhead and the command team and finding the subject,” he said.

One twist was that Kelly had a broken leg and had to be assisted out of the woods by medical technicians.

Weiland thanked the responders, some of whom took time off from work, for participating and working so well together.

“When an actual emergency happens, it only helps when we are able to work together and communicate well,” he said.