Mounted search and rescue

[tm'-fi <TFinkle@erols.com>]

Yes, I'd like that. I'll be arriving late Wednesday night, departing Sunday afternoon, staying at the conference center lodgings. I'll be meeting with TROT mid-morning on Thursday to help with last minute details for the MSAR demo in the afternoon. The MSAR Discussion is scheduled for Thursday evening. I'll be teaching Friday and Saturday in the Homeland Security and SAR Management tracks. Catch up with me when you can. See you in VA!

I will be at the conference most of the day on Friday.
 However, I will not have much free time either.  Most of my time will  devoted
to the operations and exercises at the (on-site) MSAR camp, that my search
team is hosting throughout the day.  However, I will try and look you up.
  :-)

When NASAR started communicating with people who previously expressed interest in being part of the team to develop MSAR standards, and mentioned a possible 2 year volunteer commitment, most people disappeared. Apparently most expected to get paid somehow. I had to go recruiting to get the team up to 6 members.

 

* The 2 committee members from CA, if living in a comparable location on the east coast, would be representing NY and VA.  As I mentioned before, if you were to draw a line North to South through the middle of the country, 3 committee members would be east of that line, and 3 commitee members would be west of that line. If you were to draw an East-West line through the middle of the country, 3 of the 6 would be north of that line, and 3 would be south. So we're rather scattered around the country.

We will have to agree to disagree on how your lines
were drawn.  Personally, I do not care how big CA is, it's still one State
and is under the control of one State level Emergency Management Agency.
  The States of VA and NY operate under two completely different systems,
thus representing different exposures. I still ask the question, of those
person's scattered around the Country, how many committee members are from
States East of the Mississippi River?    

I realize that this is a NASAR project and your work is going for a good
cause.  Some of my suggestions have already been submitted by the NASAR_MSAR
committee, through the work I have done with my own search team (as reflected
in Suzanne's earlier post), so please do not make it sound like I have not
contributed.  I have said this before that any MSAR team going out in the
field should have a skills level above entry level. I believe that if an
senior level rider needs to zig-zag through a backing block, then so a recently
promoted field team member.  The balance that I was referring to is about
common sense issues that deals with abilities of MSAR riders in the field.
           

Last year, I spent many months working with another senior team member to
updated our mounted team standards and we have shared them with many MSAR
 teams though out the country.  Our level of (MSAR) professionalism has national
recognition,  which is reflected through the writings of Kathy Robert's,
in her books that are sold on the NASAR site.   I am not saying we are the
best team is the country, but I will say are one of best.  The more I learn
about NASAR the more I realize how costly it is; for their membership, obtaining
SAR bench marks and maintaining yearly certification's for their evaluators.
 It was stated several months ago, comments and suggestions given to the
MSAR committee would become property of NASAR, which made me wonder, if I
give suggestions to an organization who copyright's the information, does
that mean another organization can't use my own work?  Maybe it is time to
create a national MSAR organization, I do not know.  I've simply reached
a point to where I am starting to look for another source (other than NASAR)
to turn to.   I agree and was very impressed  with David 's suggestion: 

I'd suggest that, if structured correctly, people might be a lot happier to
join an MSAR organization than NASAR. In theory joining NASAR is a great
idea. In practice, far less so. In my experience, the MRA is a lot better at
taking care of its membership, communicating with its membership, and
setting and testing for high standards than NASAR is. (NASAR has gotten a
lot better in this past year but I'm still not letting out a sigh of
relief.) A well run MSAR organization could run circles around NASAR and, in
so doing, might improve NASAR.

Tomi'
TROT-SAR
State of Maryland