RSBM=
~ 90 minutes is a very long time to wait for help. Can't relate to these parents myself at all, but what on earth would you do for those one and a half hours waiting? Run around in "dead panic" again, go further afield, start wading in the creek?
This does seem a very important and interesting time period here that must need clarifying. imo.
My husband and I spend a lot of time in remote areas. We've never had an emergency, but some friends have. In addition, my husband is trained in backcountry search and rescue. The general protocol for remote emergencies is to call for help, then continue your own search until help arrives. If you find your missing party and they are injured, you do what is necessary to stabilize them until SAR arrives. So, if we found ourselves in an emergency situation, yes, we would continue searching. I have no idea what JM and VDK did during this time, but LE and SAR would arrive with the expectation that the parents had continued searching.
Also, when you are in a remote area, the dispatcher does not typically keep you on the line. They don't want your cellphone battery to die, because if SAR can't find you, they will need to call you and get better information on your location. Most cellphones now have GPS and they also use those coordinates to find you. They will ask you to call back if your situation changes (for example: you found your missing party, now they need to know about injuries, your new location, etc.).
I realize many posters here don't have experience in remote areas, so I'm just clarifying what the usual procedure is. It's NOTHING like reporting an emergency from your home or even within a town or city. When you are in a remote area, you know that help is a long way off, and you know that you have to rely upon yourself and the rest of your party to address emergency situations. You might be amazed at some of the survival stories that should surely have resulted in tragedy.
All that said, I think the parents have been named suspects for good reason. I just don't have alarm bells ringing based on them not staying on the line or not calling 911 every 10 minutes wondering when help is going to arrive. I always assumed they were searching while waiting for SAR, but now that they are suspects, I definitely wonder what they did while waiting. If they wanted GGP and IR to believe their "he just disappeared" story, they would have had to at least faked a search, but that doesn't mean they didn't do something else while faking it (could have been hiding evidence, for example).
