Town police, state environmental conservation police, and Sandy Hook volunteer firefighters joined forces on the night of Saturday, April 7, to find and bring to safety a middle-aged man who had become lost in the dense woods of the 1,200-acre Lower Paugussett State Forest, near Lake Zoar.

Police Sergeant Jeff Silver explained that the unidentified lost man had used his cellphone just before 8 pm to place an emergency call informing police that he was lost in the woods. The man had entered the woods from the end of Great Quarter Road (indicated by the blue X on the map above), which is a long dead-end street near the Monroe town line.

Although it was dark as police started looking for the lost man, with the aid of cellphone technology police were able to derive the latitude and longitude for the place from which the man had called them, Sgt Silver said. Based on that data, police approached the forest via Stone Bridge Trail (indicated by the red X), a rugged dirt road that enters the forest west of Great Quarter Road.

Eventually, police made voice contact with the lost man, establishing the general area where he was located, Sgt Silver said. To let a lost person know where police are located, they sound their vehicles' sirens.

Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue Company also responded to Stone Bridge Trail with a dozen firefighters. Six staffers remained on standby at the firehouse.

Fire Captain Kevin Stoyak, who served as incident commander, said the fire company used some of its smaller vehicles to follow the rugged road into the woods. After firefighters met up with police in the woods, they used the fire company's "quad," which is an all-terrain vehicle, to transport the dehydrated hiker out of the woods via Stone Bridge Trail.

The man, who was familiar with the area in which he was hiking, was taken to a Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps ambulance, after which he was transported to Danbury Hospital to be checked, Capt Stoyak said.

Of the emergency response to the incident, Capt Stoyak said, "It went very well." Firefighters typically respond to several such calls each year involving people who have become lost in the woods.

[naviga:img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-314233" src="https://newtownbee.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/lost-hiker-found-Google-Maps.jpg" alt="lost hiker found -- Google Maps" width="749" height="778" /]

First responders on Saturday, April 7, joined forces to locate a man who had become lost in the Lower Paugussett State Forest. The man had entered the state forest from an entry point at the northern end of Great Quarter Road, indicated on the map with a blue X. Police and firefighters were able to locate the man, and rescue him, after tracking him to an area off the end of Stone Bridge Trail, indicated by the red X. 

-Google Map/Newtown Bee graphic