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  • From: Una Smith <una.smith@att.net>
  • To: msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [MSAR] What are your top priorities for training?
  • Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 21:40:55 -0600

As a Planning Section Chief, I write task assignments for teams during SAR
missions here in New Mexico and one of my top priorities for training is
for field team comm guys to pay attention to the radio traffic for other
teams. We had a training exercise that involved radio dead spots; none
of the teams in the field noticed they or other teams were in dead spots,
despite hearing IC "paging" teams and no response. Another priority is for
them to write down the time and significant content of their radio traffic.
I would like them to write down their task assignments too. In a high-
fatigue, high-stress situation, having key information written down can be
very useful. Lastly, many teams have inadequate understanding of tracking
techniques, particularly of sign cutting. Eg, this winter on a search for
snowboarders, one team was asked to check for snowboard tracks going down
into an out of bounds valley. They came back reporting there were tracks
everywhere on the ridgeline above the valley. Asked did any go down into
the valley, they had no answer. Although experienced SAR responders, they
had not understood the task and had failed to investigate the edge of the
track swarm.

Mounted SAR teams generally need to work more on figuring out how to speed
up our response times. Also, we need more awareness of our horses' alerts
to interesting information. During training events I have watched horses
spot someone sitting under a bush and do a "hey boss, look there" but most
of the riders merely correct the horse for goofing off ... and ride right
past the subject.

I need to be much faster at converting from lat/long to UTM, and vice versa,
and I need to make it so familiar that I can do it even when very tired and
under a lot of stress. As a step toward doing that, I wrote myself a short
recipe for converting coordinates using my GPS. Even writing the recipe was
harder than I thought it would be.

What skills do your field teams need to work on? Where do they fall short?
Ditto for yourself?

Una Smith
New Mexico





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