When the photo of “hairy feet” hanging on the rock wall was the only clue for the rescue team and went online for help; Taiwanese-born engineer Guo Fei-pin used technology to match the coordinates of the climbers within 21 minutes. When the only clue was the photo of the “hairy feet” on the rock face, the rescue team went online to ask for help.
Benjamin Kuo, a second-generation Taiwanese techie, was interviewed by the Central News Agency today and recounted how he played “Conan” on April 13. “He helped the California rescue unit locate the coordinates and successfully find a hiker who had been lost overnight by using a photo of a “hairy foot” on the Internet. The rescue mission was completed by a hiker who was lost overnight.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office released a distress message through social media Facebook and Twitter on the morning of the 13th, with a blurry photo of a pair of male feet dangling from a rock wall in Angeles National Forest. The hiker sent a text message and two photos to a friend before his phone ran out of battery.
Fei-Pin Kuo, 47, who works in the technology industry, was working from his home in Southern California when he saw the tweet and retweeted it, betting himself “I can find this spot! “.
Guo Fei-pin, who also loves outdoor sports, played the spirit of “Conan” and made a bold judgment from the rock wall in the photo. This person is in the south, because there is no green valley in the north”. This information allowed him to narrow down the search area.
Kuo then used satellite maps and technology tools, including Google Earth and two EU satellites, Sentinel-2, to cross-reference specific details of the panorama and the original photos to confirm the longitude and latitude coordinates of the lost hiker, a process that took only 21 minutes.
“To my surprise, they really accepted my suggestion and decided to go to that location to look for the person.” The search and rescue team found the person less than 3/4 of a mile from the coordinates suggested by Guo Fei Pin. Since the hiker had moved his position slightly in order to be seen, Kuo’s original reading was probably almost 100 percent correct.
The team was almost at a loss because they had no experience in searching based on a single photo. It’s really lucky and I’m glad he was rescued,” Kuo said. To have a message that helps people, that’s worth sharing. “
Growing up, Kuo’s parents came from Taiwan to the United States in the 1960s to study and then started a family there.
The Washington Post (Washington Post) on April 22 with “A hiker was lost and desperate, saved by a stranger’s unusual hobby” ( A stranger with an unusual hobby saved him,” the Washington Post reported on Fei-Pin Kuo’s good deed of helping others.
Rene Compean, a seasoned climber, said gratefully to Kuo during a video call, “You saved my life,” after he was rescued. The two of them made a date to climb together sometime.
In addition to his technology expertise, the 47-year-old Guo Fei Pin is also an amateur radio player, and his Twitter account is his radio call sign. He makes good use of this interest, having participated in the relief efforts for the Puerto Rico windstorm and often providing news about the California wildfires on social media.
Because of the need to correctly interpret wildfire information, Fei-Pin Kuo found that many satellite data and images are freely available to the outside world, and related resources were an important tool for him in finding the coordinates of the lost hikers.
From the perspective of technology, Kuo suggests that people engaged in outdoor activities make good use of the built-in compass positioning function of cell phones, and he recommends the free website and application FindMeSAR, which can be used even in deep mountains without Internet, because “sending out coordinates with latitude and longitude for help is far better than the photo of the foot”.
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