Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] Una's Questions

msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Mounted search and rescue

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN" <ilichten1@verizon.net>
  • To: "'Mounted search and rescue'" <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] Una's Questions
  • Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:59:58 -0500

As a search manager on an active high priority job I will use anything I can get my hands on, if only to hand out coffee and doughnuts or do the data entry. However, in an area where all the emergency services except police are essentially volunteer I cannot put unorganized volunteers in the field due to several considerations:

Insurance, unknown training level, and infrastructure.  Other than some career park personnel there are no highly experienced search personnel in an area that gets maybe 12 missions a year and a few more routine walk-a-ways which last maybe an hour.

 

The difference between a professional response and an amateur response is training and experience.  If the local VFD finds walk-aways in an hour every month they are sufficient to handle that type of incident.  You should never issue a “you all come” request.  The ability to manage the incident and use the resources properly depends on the management team having an idea what is coming and what it can do when it gets there.  With a four month old incident few professionals will change their schedules and haul halfway across the state for a mission with dubious training value if they have other activities scheduled. Further, involvement of certain organizations may lead to conflict. 

 

In this area there is a ground pounder team that got lots of toys but little infrastructure that was compatible with other responders and paid for it by scheduling up to 34 public appearances a year.  This left little time for training, reduced their field response drastically and they lost their credibility.  In SEPASAR most of our mounted members are long time horse people, many ride endurance events all over the country and we try to schedule a training event once per month. In some case this means riding response and safety for a local equine event, others are classes at local vet schools, fire academies, etc. They get to use the radios, navigate, and care for their horses in the field.    We have members who don’t train and they don’t get pagers. Hopefully, our appearance at a few events will raise public awareness and donations.

We try to limit fundraising events to one or two a year because taking care of the animals is time consuming and often leaves little time for anything else with backyard horses.

 

And sometimes it doesn’t matter anyway. About 2 hours ago Sharon Hill FD buried a 19 year old member who had all the training and was a certified fire fighter when the front doors and lintel of a residential garage fell on him and his team.  Protective equipment not withstanding they were all burned.  There are two volunteer firefighters still in the burn unit from a previous incident, not far away from this one, where a new garden apartment had the second floor collapse onto the first, burying them under debris.  

 

There is a difference between the various emergency responder communities, and you have to earn each others’ respect.

 

We did have a bareback rider show up at a training exercise, she bought a saddle.

 

Irv Lichtenstein

 


From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Karen Nesbitt
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 10:57 AM
To: Mounted search and rescue in Illinois USA.
Cc: MSAR
Subject: [MSAR] Una's Questions



  • [MSAR] Una's Questions, Karen Nesbitt, 10/05/2007
    • Re: [MSAR] Una's Questions, IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN, 10/05/2007

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page