• Immediately contact your nearest law enforcement agency and follow their
  instructions.
  
• Time is critical and you must be prepared to work quickly. Given the rate at
  which a person can walk, the search area will expand exponentially with each passing hour. Consider just how many square miles of difficult terrain will have to be searched if the subject is moving at two or three miles per hour, the direction of travel is unknown, and the area of the circle is expressed as
  A = (3.14)r2. In a very short time, searchers will find themselves having to work a search area of many square miles. Also, consider that a person in wet clothing can succumb to hypotherma within a few short hours in 50 and 60 degree weather.
  
• Refrain from handling the lost person's personal articles, such as clothing or
  bedding, which may be needed to provide scent articles to our canine teams.
  Better yet, seal off their bedroom until a search team arrives.
  
• Try to refrain from contaminating the lost person's scent trail, or from
  destroying footprints or other clues to the person's direction of travel.
  
• You can probably expect the first officials on the scene to do a hasty search.
  They will look for initial clues and a direction of travel, and quickly cover high
  probability areas.
  
• Additional resources will be called in if necessary, including search dog teams
  if requested.
  
• Remember that car exhaust will quickly destroy human scent. Please ask that
  all motor vehicles be turned off.
  
• Be prepared to respond to your investigator's questions about the lost
  person's medical history and personal habits, including their level of
  experience in the outdoors. They will need you assistance in preparing a Lost
  Person Questionnaire that will give searchers the information they need to do
  their job.