Night Navigation

1. Night Navigation Developed as part of the National Emergency Services Curriculum Project

2. What’s Different? • Typically teams move much slower • Why? • Vision impaired • Seeing Black and White Mostly • Simply not comfortable • Is there a solution? • Not total, but workable

3. What do we do? • Wear reflective vests • Use Red Lens in Flashlight • Avoid especially dangerous areas • Only send experienced personnel to the field at night • Wait until daytime if necessary - Use the Night for planning and crew rest

4. How do we do it? • The point person moves on a reasonable distance in the general direction of travel. • The point person stops at a point where the compass person can direct them left or right by voice or signal until they are directly marking the proper bearing for travel. • The group moves to the point person and the procedure takes place again.

5. While you can follow your compass- there is less chance of drifting by using steering points.

6. Why use a red lens? • As light decreases, the sensing tasks are passed over from the cones to the rods of the eyes. • The sensitivity of the rods involves a pigment called visual purple (rhodopsin) which is bleached in bright light and takes time to re-constitute • Because the rods are less sensitive to red light, we use red lenses in our lights to keep our limited night vision

7. Why else should we use a red lens? • It takes on average 40+ minutes to regain your night vision • Younger people tend to adapt quicker than adults to the dark

9. Vision • While the red lens will protect night vision for navigation and other tasks- remember white light might be needed for search tasks, medical tasks, tracking, and in some terrain, even for travel. • Red lens flashlight, head lamp, glow stick, spot light- pick your equipment to meet your need.

10. Be careful out there!Less visibility means less time to react to environmental and other hazards!

11. QUESTIONS? THINK SAFETY!