Nicola Bullen search.

what stands out is motivation. Police told to check the rivers, is not a motivational search instruction.  Actively talking of abduction and walking out on the family, turns a proper search into a tick in the box exercise, that no one believes will find anything.

A person in a river has two scenarios.

 One scenario is the casualty will be carried by a fast current down stream to the sea.

 The other is the casualty will be snagged on river junk. 

The search covered none of the scenarios adequately. 

Know area of junk in a river will take more staff to search not just a sonar. More humans less reliance on technology would have helped. It is a bit like doing a coastal search and excluding the back of Dunstanburgh Castle because all the sea junk ends up there.

Motivational search plan should be , we are searching for a casualty trapped in river junk. The sweep width is an arms length. You will get your feet wet, and take a roll of cordon tape to deploy when you locate clues. Not we will deploy divers with sonar so check the river bank.

search teams can learn a lot from this incident, run through all that could have gone wrong, and make plans they do not happen on any of your searches.

poor management will say we will wait for the results of an enquiry before making changes, thus history will repeat!