Sullivan County Plans To Use Sonar In Search For Missing Woman

Bristol, Tenn.—Sullivan County will bring in heavy duty equipment Monday—to locate a missing woman in South Holston Lake.

They will continue to focus their search on a 15-hundred square foot patch of water just off Lakeview Dock Road.

Deputies said 55-year-old Alice Bachman disappeared Tuesday night. They found her flip flops, purse, and beach towel nearby. Her boat was only half covered.

11 Connects Reporter George Jackson spoke with Sullivan County EMS Director Jerry Fleenor and Kingsport Lifesaving Crew Member Jim Bean.

The following are excerpts from those interviews:

GJ: “What can you tell me?“

JF: “We’re going to continue the operation. Unfortunately to this point, we’ve not found her.“

“We’ve used the cameras, we’ve used the deep-water dragging procedures, we’ve used the divers. We’re going keep using these resources.“

“We’ll probably have to scale back some because a lot of what we have is from the volunteers. Kingsport Lifesaving Crew has done a lot of this operation themselves. A lot of those volunteers have to go back to work. We have other resources we’re going to bring in during the week.“

GJ: “Do you know when the next search will take place?“

JF: “We’re doing something right now. We’re doing dragging operations in the vicinity of where the victim is supposed to be. We’ll do that for a period of time. Tomorrow we have plans to bring in a side-scan sonar unit to search the area up and down the east side of the dock.“

GJ: “If you had a dozen additional divers, would this search be a lot easier?“

JF: “Not necessarily easier by any means, I mean, that’s a risk. What they’re doing here is beyond what you would consider recreational diving because of the depth and everything else. If you had more divers, it’s not that we would put more divers in all at once, but we could put two in and let them use their time, put a couple more in and let them use their time.“

GJ: “Does time or water movement play a factor in the focus of your search?

JF: “No. We’re fairly confident that she’s in the area where we are looking. We’re going to try to broaden it out a little bit and then come back in to the location where we feel she’s located.“

GJ: “How large is this area?“

“About 15-hundred square feet. It’s a small area. It’s an isolated area. The depth is the limitation on this—as far as people. If we can get the cameras in here, and that’s what our plan is. If we locate her, we’ll hold that location, get the divers back, and go recover her.“

GJ: “What is this sonar equipment?“

JB: “Most people would compare it to an ultrasound in the hospital. It sends out radio waves, they bounce off the bottom, come out, and make a picture—either on a TV screen or a printer. If there’s an object in the water, the area where there’s a shadow, won’t send any reflection back.“

“It’s not exact science. When we’re looking for bodies in the water—sometimes, it they’re laying arms together, legs together—it’s hard to differentiate between that and a log.“

GJ: What are the divers doing while they are down there?

“The two divers that were here were actually connected to each other and we actually had lines down. One would stay stationary at the bottom, and the other would swim in circles around the diver.“

“They were able to cover a good area where our probability of detection was the highest.“

Click the play icon (above) to view a video version of this report.

To view archived stories on the search for Bachman, click the web links (at left).