Mounted search and rescue

["IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN" <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

The facility to be used depends on the purpose of the conference.  It must accommodate the classroom, meals, sleeping, and horses and dogs.  To teach search management and or ICS/NIMS you need a classroom setting with technology available because the courses are designed to be taught that way.  If you teach rope rescue the appropriate outdoor setting is also needed. And if you are going to teach or exercise MSAR tactics you need all the land and the horse support facilities. You also need to support the conference itself—meals, sanitary facilities, first aid crew, administration and logistics.  

 

Many state level training sessions also incorporate a “council meeting” at night to discuss and resolve operational practices and SOG’s and sometime elect the next year’s officers.  Many such meetings are held at youth hostels, public campsites (parks, KOA, YMCA, etc.), nature centers, or similar locations.  We have also used college campuses, regional fire training centers, and community colleges. 

 

The major problem is finding a facility that combines all these features or can be adapted for use.  State/ County parks often have the land, camping sites, and may even have a nature center auditorium.  Unfortunately they may not have horse or dog accommodations and do not allow for exclusive use of an area.  Similarly, horseback riding vacation facilities may have the stalls but the cost may be too high for volunteers.  NASAR uses hotels but also needs field trips for hands on training.  In the Mid-Atlantic area it is relatively easy to find a conference center near a large park but horse and dog facilities would be lacking. 

 

Could this activity be staged entirely indoors or in limited outdoor competition areas?  This would open the possibilities up to include show grounds and even the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex.  Depending on the levels of support needed even a 4-H center would do, if you want to pay $600 per ring per day, plus crew.  And you still need overnight facilities in most locations. 

 

PSARC currently uses a charitable organization’s facility the Lancaster area, in the past Penn State Abington hosted conferences and classes, and several private farms have done so.  There are some excellent group camps in the PA state parks built by the CCC in the 1930’s and maintained as full service facilities for forest fire crews, but no horse facilities. There are horse camping facilities at Fair Hill, MD; show boarding maybe at the NJ Horse Park in Allentown, and a new Horsepark in Gloucester, NJ

And a horse hotel in Gettysburg, near the battlefield. There is camp in the Poconos, but no horses.  

 

If you can come up with what you need we might be able to get the tourist commission to find it. 

 

Irv Lichtenstein

 

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From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Jorene Downs
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 12:06 AM
To: 'Mounted search and rescue'
Subject: Re: [MSAR] Training Conference idea?