Mounted search and rescue

["Marie Lester" <marie.lester@gmail.com>]

Thank you for a thorough explanation of factors leading to good
decisions, including the meaning of acronyms.  As you can tell, many
of us are still working to get on board regarding the national
language pertaining to search efforts

Marie Lester
Central Ohio Mounted Search Unit

On 9/22/06, Una Smith <una.smith@att.net> wrote:
> Phyllis Forrest wrote:
> >You still need to assess your assignment upon arrival and be sure that the
> >mounted units are being put to best use, and not assigned to areas which are
> >better suited for foot searchers.
>
> Well, that's not necessarily a risk assessment.  Judgements re your
> fitness for a given task, *compared to other SAR resources*, are SAR
> management's job, not yours.  There are far more factors that go
> into making task assignments, than just which kind of resource is
> best suited to which task.  Those factors include the availability
> of all SAR resources, of all kinds;  the respective strengths of
> the resources on hand (which teams have the most medical capability,
> the best navigation, are the most experienced and reliable, etc);
> and the priorities of the mission at hand.
>
> As an MSAR field team, your job includes looking out for your own
> safety (that's your highest priority), first evaluating and then
> doing your assigned task, and doing it so well that in the future
> you will be called out sooner and/or given more interesting tasks
> with higher POA (probability of area, the likelihood that the
> search subject is in your search area).
>
> The difference between a training ride and a mission is that in
> the case of training, there should be far more detailed briefing
> beforehand, with an emphasis on a questions and answers period
> at the end of the briefing;  far more coaching during the ride;
> and after the ride there should be a debriefing with emphasis on
> evaluating the ride as a training tool per se.  This may sound
> very neurotic, but that is how good training works.  I use the
> word "should" above because if the trainer is not trained nor
> experienced in the art of training, there is a tendency for
> many of these steps to be skipped or kept too short and for the
> educational value of the ride to be minimal.  Also, the trainer
> needs to be a strong enough leader, and have the full support of
> the unit's officers, to make all these steps happen even when
> the trainees think (as they often do) that a lot of talking is
> a waste of good riding time.
>
> Back to risk assessment.  You could be assigned to search forest
> with a lot of deadfall and undergrowth, off trails.  Slow going
> for anyone, and frustrating for horses.  Such terrain is perfectly
> safe for some MSAR field teams, but it is very, very dangerous
> for others.  The difference lies in the specific capabilities of
> the riders and mounts.  The *individual* capabilities of each
> rider and each mount, I must stress.  Now you might be tempted
> to say don't ever risk horses in such terrain;  it's much safer
> to use groundpounders there.  But in such terrain horses have a
> far higher POD (probability of detection, given the subject is
> in the search area ie POA=1) than people do.  What to do?  Either
> take the safe approach and refuse any and all task assignments
> in such terrain, or train specifically for safe negotiation there.
> In planning a training, take care re contributing risk factors.
> Eg, don't combine difficult terrain with cadaver scent training!
> The scent causes some horses to panic.  Similarly, think twice
> before you accept a task assignment in difficult terrain if it
> seems likely that the misssion will turn out to be a recovery:
> horses not *known* to be calm in the face of cadavers would not
> be safe to use under those terms.
>
>         Una Smith
>         New Mexico
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