On June 22, 2014, the Texas Department of Public Safety called the TEXSAR activation line in regard to a missing mountain biker, 30 year old Wesley Andrew Hixson, who was last seen around 10 a.m. on June 21st. Hixson crashed his mountain bike prior to getting separated from his group and may have suffered a head injury. Flower Mound PD and other agencies had conducted a search the night before TEXSAR was contacted. Within 45 minutes of activation 7 GSAR...
On the evening on May 27, 2014 TEXSAR received a request for assistance in searching for a three-year-old girl who had gone missing while playing in a flooded creek near her home in Caldwell County. Within two hours of the initial call, more than two-dozen TEXSAR members and canines were on site searching the swollen creek and the surrounding areas for the missing child. After 6 hours of searching, the TEXSAR Swiftwater Rescue and Canine teams were able to locate and...
On the evening of Saturday, April 26, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office received reports that a man had gone missing when his canoe overturned on Lake Travis. STARFlight rescue swimmers were able to locate the canoe but were unable to locate the victim. On the morning of Sunday, April 27, the Sheriff’s Office made the call to TEXSAR to request the assistance of our canine assets. While en route to the scene, however, TEXSAR received a call that the body of...
In early April TEXSAR members joined forces with resources from Texas Parks and Wildlife, Game Wardens, TMAR, and the Bastrop County Office of Emergency Management in a first of its kind training exercise. The exercise began on the morning of Friday April 11 with reports of a missing aircraft in the Lake Bastrop area. Upon news of the crash, an Incident Management Team with members from all responding agencies was established and search and rescue operations began shortly thereafter. Over the...
FAST 1 on the Gaudalupe On a chilly March weekend 9 TEXSAR members completed their FAST 1 certifications and joined the 21 current certification holders to form the largest volunteer swiftwater rescue team in the state of Texas! The FAST 1 class, taught by TEXSAR’s own Shawn Hohnstreiter and Mark Baumann, was held on the Guadalupe River in New Braunfels, TX. The course started with classroom based learning on Friday evening and then moved to the frigid Guadalupe River where the...
“On Saturday February 22, 2014 at approximately 2330 hours, a boater in the vicinity of Hatter Cove in Lake Travis observed a fisherman on a dock fall into the water.” A search effort was immediately launched, led by the Travis County Sheriff’s Office. Unfortunately, two days of underwater searching, hampered by low water temperatures, poor visibility, and numerous in-water obstacles, yielded no results. Sheriff Deputies decided to try a different approach and contacted TEXSAR to request the service of our...
