PRINEVILLE, OR -- The two Lake Tahoe sisters reported missing this week at the Symbiosis eclipse festival were found safe Thursday morning. Crook County Sheriff John Gautney says the pair stayed at the Big Summit Prairie event two days longer than planned and checked in with their parents as soon as they realized people were looking for them.
It’s just one of more than 20 missing persons cases his agency has taken from the massive event in the Ochocos, this week. "There is no cell service there. All these folks have been in there over a week and so family members are getting concerned about them because they haven’t heard from them. Evidently they didn’t tell them they wouldn’t have cell service; or maybe they didn’t know. In either case, as things are closing down up there and people are coming down out of the hill where they get into cell service, then they’re calling family members and saying ‘hey, sorry, we just didn’t have cell service.’" He tells KBND News, "That was the case of the two missing girls that went out to the media; they were up there, they stayed two days longer than they intended to, and they had no way to get ahold of the family members until they got back into town. And that's what we're finding with these others. Right now, we're just kind of waiting for people to come down into cell range where they can get ahold of family members or we can get ahold of them." He says they're evaluating each report to see if there's anything suspicious that would warrant additional attention.
Although final numbers are not yet available, Sheriff Gautney says the festival attracted considerably more than the 30,000 people allowed by the event's permit. Traffic was the biggest problem, but they also responded to reports of domestic abuse and drug overdoses.
