Help rescuers find you

Stay in one place, make big bright marks, and use sound and shine so searching people can spot you.

easy⏳ an hourtradition — not yet hand-tested

Wildfire or evacuation danger: Do not use this stay-put or signal-fire guide. Leave as local authorities direct and open Wildfire help (English).

Most lost people are found within one to three days — if they stay put. A walking person is a small moving dot; a person beside a big signal is a fixed target. Your job is not to walk out. It is to make yourself easy to see and easy to hear, then wait.

Searchers come by air and by ground. Air searchers see shapes and contrast — things that don't look natural. Ground searchers hear sounds and see movement. Build signals for both.

You need

• An open spot — a clearing, hilltop, beach, or riverbank, within a short safe walk of your shelter. Signals under trees are invisible from the air.
• Anything brightly coloured — a jacket, tarp, or bag in orange, red, or blue. Nature is green and brown; anything else jumps out.
• Rocks, logs, or branches for ground letters — darker or lighter than the ground around them is what matters.
• Something shiny — a mirror, phone screen, foil, or polished tin lid. Sunlight flashes can be seen from many kilometres away.
• Something loud — a whistle if you have one; if not, two sticks or rocks to bang together.
• A fire, if you can make one safely — flame shows at night, smoke by day.

Steps

1. Stop moving. Decide, out loud if it helps: "I stay here." Choose a spot near water and shelter, next to the most open ground you can find.
2. Lay out a huge ground signal in the open.
   • Make a big V (means "need help") or SOS from rocks, logs, or stamped-down snow or sand.
   • Make each line at least 3 metres long and half a metre wide — about two people lying head to toe. Small marks vanish from the air.
   • Aim for contrast: dark logs on pale sand, pale rocks on dark soil, trampled lines in snow or grass.
3. Add colour and movement. Spread your brightest item flat in the open, weighted with stones. Tie a strip of bright cloth to a tall stick so it flaps — movement catches the eye.
4. Set up your sound signal. The world-wide distress call is three of anything: three whistle blasts, three bangs, three shouts. Pause about a minute, listen, repeat. A whistle carries much farther than a shout and costs almost no energy.
5. Prepare fire signals, if fire is safe where you are. Keep a small fire going, with a pile of green leaves or damp grass beside it — green stuff on flames makes thick white smoke, your daytime signal. Three fires in a row or a triangle is another distress sign, if you have fuel to spare.
6. Use shine when you hear or see anything. Hold the mirror near your eye. Stretch out your other arm and make a V with two fingers. Put the target — plane, ridge, distant person — in the V, then wobble the mirror so the flash sweeps across your fingers; it is now hitting the target. No aircraft in sight? Sweep the flash slowly along the horizon a few minutes every hour anyway.
7. Keep a routine. Signal in short rounds — three sounds, listen, a mirror sweep, check the smoke pile — every half hour or so, and rest in between. Rescue can take days; pace yourself.

Watch out

• Wandering "just a little further." Every step makes the search area bigger. If you truly must move (danger, no water), leave an arrow of rocks or sticks pointing your way, and a note if you can.
• Signals under tree cover. From the air, the tree tops hide everything. Signals go in the open, even if your shelter isn't.
• Shouting yourself hoarse. Constant yelling wrecks your voice in under an hour. Use the whistle or bangs; save the voice for when people are close.
• A signal fire that gets away. Clear the ground to bare dirt for at least a metre around it, keep it small, and never leave it burning while you sleep. A wildfire is a far bigger danger than staying lost one more night.
• Hiding from noise. Frightened people, especially children, sometimes hide from helicopters or shouting strangers. Searchers are help. Move into the open and make yourself big.
• Giving up on the signals after day one. Marks blow over, fires die, cloth slides off. Check and rebuild every morning.

How it works

Searchers scan huge areas quickly, so they only notice things that break the pattern of nature: straight lines, bright colour, rhythmic sound, flashes, and smoke. Nothing wild makes a 3-metre V, blinks sunlight on purpose, or calls in threes — those things read as "human here." Threes are the agreed distress code because they can't easily happen by accident. Staying in one place turns you from a moving needle in a haystack into a fixed beacon.