Mounted search and rescue

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

The point is not that ATV’s are restricted here in the EAST but that any resource you cannot train with creates a difficulty in the field.  One of the remarkable practices in this area is that all the specialty teams (urban rescue, mass casualty, disaster relief, technical rescue, fire, etc.) hold regularly scheduled drills, exercises, and task force deployments.  They get to know each responder personally and how each organization works down to the individual responder level.  This is necessary for good interaction in a real emergency.  Currently being organized is a formal water rescue task force among the fire companies and dive units so the responses are in the CAD, not in some person’s notes from the last association meeting. We can send wilderness SAR personnel to most of these activities as participants because the protective equipment is available for loan. Even the township emergency managers meet monthly to share. 

 

If there are specialty resources in your area, whether it is dogs, ATV’s, aircraft, or large pools of volunteer firefighters for manpower, you must get to know them, how they respond, how they work, what they need for support.  They have to become more than a phone number in a resource directory.  We don’t have 50000 acres of desert, we have county parks that are 3400 acres of trees around a lake and bounded by highways and housing developments.  The biggest PA state park in the area is 7500 acres, plus some state forest land and state game lands that are off limits to everybody, except hunters.

 

Horses on the other hand can go anywhere a vehicle can in state parks and forests, and many county or township areas as well, by regulation.  They can go anywhere a pedestrian can because the vehicle code classifies saddle horses as pedestrians.  There are even municipalities that classify horses as if they were still used for commuting to work, or were the work, and have no zoning restrictions on barns, carriage houses, or back yard paddocks. And we have townships currently debating how close to the property line you can ride an ATV on your own land because they are a nuisance. 

 

You must be aware of these conditions imposed on your training and either work around them or don’t use the resource.  In our case we don’t use resources we can’t train with because this is one case where OJT doesn’t always work.

 

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 Jorene Downs
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 10:53 PM
To: 'Mounted search and rescue'
Subject: Re: [MSAR] search strategies for mounted SAR

 

Irv, if there aren’t more obvious locations locally where training or joint training is allowed, perhaps you can use the successful model used by others around the country. They are connecting with owners of larger acreage for training locations.

 

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Jorene Downs

SAR & CERT

Mounted SAR

www.ceoates.com/msar  

KJ6JCD