Teen got lost during hike
A 19-year-old woman who got lost while hiking at Red Bluff Monday ended up safe.
Maliyah Brown of Columbia came out on her own at about 6:30 p.m. after hearing first responders’ vehicles that helped orient her in the right direction.
Morgantown Volunteer Fire Department Chief Krae Morgan said her cellphone had died and she got turned around. She came up along the side of the bluffs and walked through some thickets that caused a few scratches.
A call went over the scanner around 5 p.m. Monday saying Brown’s family had been looking for her for about two hours and couldn’t find her.
Red Bluff, a natural formation along the Pearl River outside Morgantown, is a popular destination for hikers, although it is located on private property and not technically open to the public.
There was a countywide response Monday as 38 first responders came to help search. They set up at the top of Red Bluff, held a debriefing and sent ground teams to different locations. At the same time, three drones were deployed to search from the air.
“They are an important asset to us for sure. We’re able to search wide-open areas in less than half the time that somebody on foot can,” Cole Robbins, chief of the Tri-Community Volunteer Fire Department, said. “They can’t search thick, wooded areas, but we were able to search the river and railroad tracks and actual Red Bluff itself while foot teams spread out in the woods.”
They are personally owned drones, and this is the second search-and-rescue mission they’ve been used on.
In addition to Morgantown, other responding agencies included Southwest Marion, Foxworth, Pine Burr, South Marion, Tri-Community, Civil Defense and the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
Morgan said most of the calls they receive from Red Bluff are a little different than this one and involve people hiking during the summer in the middle of the day.
“Air doesn’t circulate in the bluff because it’s down in a hole. … You get down there, you get hot and you get dehydrated,” he said.
Pictured Above: Eight different first responder agencies came together Monday evening to search for missing 19-year-old Maliyah Brown at Red Bluff. | Photo by Joshua Campbell
