Mounted search and rescue

[pennbo@verizon.net]

Jorene and Tom'i both make some very valid points. We are also surrounded by wilderness with pockets for humanity amongst the nothing. We have 12,000ft peaks and 120F desert, sand dunes, and river beds. The Pacific Crest Trail circumnavigates our valley. We are also an hour from a minor urban center and 2-3 hours from several major urban areas. With the economy tanking we expect MORE visitors to our area due to it's proximity. Thankfully because of GPS' and PLB our job is shifting from straight Search to more Rescue- although we still have a fair amount of searching to do. (kids don't carry the family GPS unit when they wander away, accidents happen that incapacitate hikers, animals disable humans, etc) We also have a significant amount of criminal activity where we may be called to help with victim search or evidence etc - again because of the interface between urban and wilderness. Because our county is the largest in the US and incompasses multiple wilderness areas and multiple types of hazardous terrain our units need to train on manydifferent techniques frequently in order to be of any use. Our unit is committed to really trying to work more with other types of resource units - ATV, dog, groundpounder, air- this year so that we are all more familiar with strengths and weaknesses so we can become a better OVERALL county-wide team. 

It must be difficult for some of your units to maintain top training when you have very few call-outs yearly. Too, it must be hard to keep folks committed in those cases as well because it can be hard to keep them committed even when you are regularly working!

Chris 

May 23, 2009 09:52:55 AM, Jorene@CEOates.com wrote:
> I suspect Tomi' is correct and many regions have fewer rural / wilderness
> searches as the population expands and subdivisions replace farmlands, etc.
> Those of us with huge state and/or national parks and forests in our
> response areas are likely to continue with a higher number of searches. 
>
> The vast majority of our local responses are up the mountain (Sierra
> Nevadas) at 4000-9000 feet in thousands of adjoining acres of national
> forests, and occasionally at the 9-14,000+ foot peaks where we usually only
> send the technical teams. I recall for several years running locally we had
> 75-100 SAR incidents every year in our county, plus mutual aid response out
> of county in CA where there are sometimes 30 or more search incidents going
> at a time statewide. Many of our local incidents are multi-agency /
> multi-jurisdiction because the wilderness area is so vast. Searches down in
> the valley's more rural agricultural areas tend to be infrequent.
>
> The use of technology such as GPS - or the economy reducing travel -
> (instead of population expansion) is more likely to cause reduction of SAR
> in a vast wilderness region like ours, and we have been seeing the impact.
> Our number of annual local SAR incidents has reduced at least 25% the past
> few years compared to the prior total of 75-100. 
>
> As the number of SAR incidents reduce, MSAR with additional or more
> specialized training have the advantage of potential for activation over
> more limited traditional MSAR teams. (For example, trained to perform
> evacuation in the saddle, or horses trained to scent and alert like SAR
> dogs.) Some MSAR are also getting involved in disaster response, locally
> assisting in equine evacuation or performing another role. (Online FEMA
> training for IS-317 is highly recommended as basic education for any SAR
> also doing disaster response. Some regions already require this very basic
> training. http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp )
>
> - - - - - -
> Jorene Downs
> SAR & CERT
> Mounted SAR
> www.ceoates.com/msar