Mounted search and rescue

["Irvin Lichtenstein " <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

Spacing for line and grid search is determined by visibility in the area/terrain to be searched not a book. There are tables in search management texts that indicate how many people and how many man hours it takes to search an area to a probability of detection.  Using trained mounted personnel for this kind of detailed, thorough, search is a waste of resources.  Since the object is to have a line or grid searcher stumble over the subject almost any spontaneous volunteer can be taught to grid search under supervision in ten minutes or less.  Depending on the cover foot searchers may actually be more efficient in some areas where ground surface visibility is blocked by the ground cover (vegetation).     

 

Generally speaking, thorough techniques, such as grid search, are reserved for desperation searches for immobile objects, such as bodies and evidence.  They require lots of man hours to cover a small area, usually destroy any clues left on the ground surface, and give a false sense of having searched when often the line misses large areas due to difficulty in penetration. For a rough guestimate  of manpower divide your line by 50 feet or 10 meters to figure out how many you need to cover the line and then use 1 MPH or slightly more than 1.5 KPH as the line speed.  The area should be searched at least 3 times by different crews, moving in different directions,  to be considered searched.  And somebody has to pay for the crop damage.

 

Irv Lichtenstein

SE PA SAR

 

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From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Robert Boddy
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 11:06 AM
To: 'Mounted search and rescue'
Subject: Re: [MSAR] search strategies for mounted SAR

 

On a tangent from this thread…

 

Does someone have a document that has the intervals between riders for a line/grid search?

 

Thanks,

Bob