Mounted search and rescue

["Finkle, Tomi (CTR)" <Tomi.Finkle@associates.dhs.gov>]

Asking if you are a volunteer, a volunteer or a volunteer?  Turn to the
NRF for the answers

Many tasks within the public safety field have changed since 9-11, and
Search & Rescue is on of those functions. Blame your Governor if you
don't like the way Search and Rescue is controlled within your State,
please don't criticize  the MSAR personnel on this list who dedicate
hundreds of hours each years to remain/become an ESF-9 responder. 

A local county or town government can still establish what ever
standards they wish, but they then become a stand alone entity.
However, all 50 governors have signed the National Incident Management
System (NIMS) compact and have also agreed to also support the National
Response Framework (NRF), formally the National Response Plan.  Within
the NRF there are three kinds of volunteers; 1) those that are
considered personnel that perform essential support functions (ESF) such
as SAR ESF-9 responders, 2) Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster
(VOAD), and 3)Unaffiliated volunteers.  Categories one (1) and two (2)
are persons who are trained within their discipline, person who have
been pre-identified or credentialed and whose skills have been validated
prior to an incident.  The third category, unaffiliated volunteers,
which requires no formal training or affiliations, just show up and be
assigned the volunteer coordinator at an incident and take an assignment
that assigned.   

You can read for yourself how emergency support functions and incident
volunteers have been pre-identified at:
http://www.fema.gov/emergency/nrf/index.htm#   

Regardless of how good a person thinks they are; nowadays proof of
training and certification must be documented before an incident occurs.

T'mi
   -----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Una Smith
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 1:54 PM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] Need to end these emails

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 05:27:43PM +0000, Evans, Sheila wrote:
>It is not what I thought I was signing up for.

This is the real stuff.  Right here we are dealing with *the* problem of
SAR as a volunteer service.

        Una Smith
        New Mexico