Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

msar-riders - RE: [MSAR] Wilderness SAR with LAPD

msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Mounted search and rescue

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Jeff Ezell" <eztech@pdq.net>
  • To: "Mounted search and rescue" <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [MSAR] Wilderness SAR with LAPD
  • Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 14:41:50 -0500

Jorene,
 
This is a great post. Thank you for your extra efforts to share this. It would be helpful to have other teams post some details about their search deployments, particularly what they learned to make the next one better. It should not be viewed as boasting, etc, This level of detail (and more) is the kind of knowledge that we can all benefit from. It's not the same as being there, but as close as the rest of us can get and still learn from it. Terry's post about Storm's alerts & reactions and both Terry and Storm's interpretations "reading each other" was the same kind of detail we can all learn from.
 
It was also good to hear how much LAPD appreciated your team's professional efforts. I hope they follow-up with NASAR or someone and get some SAR training. You might continue to encourage them.
 
Anybody else?
(PS Hunter & I are sad cause we missed SAREX this year and couldn't visit with you and your brown cowgirl hat. Another trail...another time!)
Jeff Ezell
US Regional Search Dogs
US Search Affiliates

...to Search...to Save...

jeff@usrsd.org
-----Original Message-----
From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Jorene Downs
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2003 4:20 AM
To: MSAR-L
Subject: [MSAR] Wilderness SAR with LAPD

Fascinating experience. 2 LAPD (Los Angeles PD) officers overdue deep in our high mountain backcountry. They went off into rugged terrain on motorcycles, discovered what they thought was the right trail just took them into worse terrain, thought they were about to run out of gas and decided to hike out. Heading the right direction back to camp took them into even rougher terrain ... wearing motorcycle boots. (Ouch!) They promptly destroyed their feet and had reduced mobility. When air search and local ground personnel (Forest Svc and our resident Deputy) hadn't turned up any real clues by late afternoon other than a direction of the bike tracks, we assembled the Hasty Team. 4 hour drive from my home to the ICP - at speed with the Hasty Team for over 3 hours up and over the Sierra Nevadas to the other side. That night we sent out trackers and such. More resources were scheduled for morning. We had the motorcycles spotted by 9 AM with a direction of foot travel established. The 2 LAPD officers were located by lunch, brought in by chopper. I got home late last night. USFS will recover the motorcycles today. This could have been a typical SAR for us and normally I wouldn't even mention it. However ...
 
What kind of reaction would you have if you heard LAPD was responding to "help" in a SAR in your territory? I admit most of us had visions of steamrollers - 2 of their own were missing. I had about 35 from LAPD (we had them turn back more resources!) report to the ICP as volunteers in the morning, and every one of them was pleasure to work with. Repeated question "What can we do to help?" And every time I said "Can you ...?" they were right there handling it.
 
LAPD essentially said "Let us know what resources you need - we'll get them for you." @25 officers with off-road motorcycles were already at the mobile ICP, including 5 from LAPD's off-road motorcycle team. A few quads. Chopper, with more if we asked for them to add to our local air support.  3 mounted showed up from LAPD - not SAR trained, but experienced backcountry. I blinked when one LAPD Lt pulled her Friesian out of the trailer! ;)
 
Typical of law enforcement LAPD had no training in SAR - much less Wilderness SAR at 8000+ feet - and they realized that as fast as I started asking about their training, experience, equipment on hand, etc. There were only a couple of officers that we'd be able to send out anywhere other than well marked roads. Nothing off-road. But they very useful as road and jeep trail monitors.
 
Never in my wildest thoughts would it have occurred to me I'd be shaking hands with a Deputy Chief from LAPD who'd flown in on one of their choppers. So we ran a successful deep Wilderness SAR with all kinds of brass around. We've had our own brass around before for high visibility SAR - the Sheriff and/or UnderSheriff usually show up - but this was my first experience with brass from outside agencies.  
 
From LAPD we had a Deputy Chief, Captain, 2 Lieutenants, a couple of Sgts., @ 25 officers, several communications techs (they had their own repeater en route), 1 chopper (more if we wanted them) ... and of course family was at the mobile CP. LAPD was great to work with!
 
My primary point of contact was an LAPD Lt who expressed interest in providing at least basic SAR training to some of his personnel. I pointed him towards NASAR. ;)
 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jorene Downs
Tulare Co, CA
SAR, MSAR, Swiftwater Rescue, US&R,
Technical Rescue, Cave Rescue,
Hasty Team, ICP
www.CEOates.com/sar
Tulare-Kings CERT Program Coordinator
www.tk-cert.org
 



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page