Mounted search and rescue

["T'mi Finkle" <tfinkle@erols.com>]

Partnering and training with other SAR resources is an excellent suggestion and is something our team has been doing just that for years.  We have included Civil Air Patrol, a SAR K9’s (Air Scent, Tracking, Trailing and HRD), ground teams and ATV evacuation resources during our trainings. Our team members also attend State-wide multi discipline SAR exercises and workshops where we are exposed to a host of SAR disciplines and personnel.  We have found that training together with other SAR resources enhances performance during actual mission deployments.  We train in Federal, State and local wilderness properties as well as on privately owned farms.  Because our team is a 501 C-3 organization property owners can write off any (waived) rental fees for the use of their property when we train there. As a validation SAR resource that holds State level MOU’s we can incorporate special training on many government owned properties by simply submitting a special use permit. Due to safety concerns most of our training sites are 1000 to 8000 acres in size and includes exposing our team members to a variety of terrain conditions and population densities.  If anyone is on Facebook, I have a picture posted there of a “K-9 meets Equine” class that I taught during last week’s Virginia SAR Conference (I can email that photo to anyone who contacts me off-list). There is also a picture of me teaching to a youth SAR group, many of whom will be tomorrow’s SAR responders.

 

Susan, as far as search strategies; we use NASAR techniques for much of our MSAR training.  These protocols include but are not limited to; hasty searches, route searches, area searches, passive search techniques, implementing lost person behavior patterns, mounted evacuations and calculating POD. Because search strategies require basic SAR skills, knowledge and abilities; we also include the basics such as land navigation, communications, first aid, wilderness survival and other topics found within the NASAR manual (our team’s standards include these general SAR strategies).  An example of some of the MSAR standards that we have incorporated can be found at www.vasarco.org within the equine standards.

 

T’mi

www.trotsar.org

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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 5:34 PM
To: 'Mounted search and rescue'
Subject: Re: [MSAR] search strategies for mounted SAR

 

Irv and Tomi’ provided some good general information. Also consider that MSAR partners very well with some resources, incident and even mission-specific. Most commonly you’ll find MSAR partnered with Quads/ATV or other smaller wheeled vehicles. There is an increasing number of MSAR partnering very advantageously with SAR Dogs as complementary resources using the senses. Where there are riders and mounts trained and equipped for backcountry packing there are other opportunities.

 

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Jorene Downs

SAR & CERT

Mounted SAR

www.ceoates.com/msar 

KJ6JCD

 

 

From: sarcrna@aol.com

I am looking for specific search strategies for mounted SAR if anyone has that type of protocol in their standards.  

 

Thanks,

Susan Martinez