Bless you for trying, roses. Without people like you, there would be very little hope of recovery at all.
What you described is not unusual for search parties. When an experienced search coordinator maps out what areas have been searched, they indicate what type of search it was.
The most thorough searches are those that have the searchers on their hands and knees, shoulder to shoulder, crawling slowly over the given territory and flagging anything that does not belong to the natural environment. As I'm sure you can imagine, such searches are very slow and very hard on the searchers. Nice as it would be to carry out every search that way, it just isn't practical.
It's understood that foot searches are not as thorough and that there's often an attitude of "let's get'er done here." Whoever is doing the mapping will take that into consideration when they plot out where to send the next set of searchers.
That's why it's not unusual for a given area to be searched more than once.
I wish someone would make a tape for volunteer searchers to watch before searching for the first time. The tape would be about 15 to 20 minutes long and would show just how easily something the size of a human body can be hidden in various types of environments. And at the end, it would show bones in various states of exposure because people tend to think of bones as always being white (they're not).
In my ideal world, the cost of making the tape would be funded by nonprofits and would be distributed free to any LE or search organisation that requested it. It would be professionally produced and shot in HD, so that it would look as realistic as possible.
Actually, in my ideal world, there would be 4 or 5 versions of the tape, showing different environments. That way, when a search is needed, the coordinator could request the tape(s) that fit the environment to be searched.
lease:
