Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] Brief mission yesterday

msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Mounted search and rescue

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Una Smith <una.smith@att.net>
  • To: msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] Brief mission yesterday
  • Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 12:50:13 -0600

To give you all some idea of the scope of SAR missions in New Mexico...

On the map New Mexico roughly is a square 350 miles (570 km) across.
We have on the order of 100 individual resources. That is persons like
me who are called individually to fill specific SAR management roles:
incident commander, planning section chief, etc. We also have about 50
SAR teams. These are independent volunteer organizations that can (we
hope) send one or more field teams when called.

Last year we had 120 missions. During every mission a check in/out log
is kept at incident base. Those logs show 2000 personnel (individuals
who checked in during one or more missions) and 11,000 person hours on
scene.

Many but not all of the above mentioned 2000 personnel are members of
one or more of these 50 SAR teams. (We also log spontaneous volunteers
and agency personnel). Clearly, most teams are small. Most missions
are small too, so we call only the nearest team(s). Last year no team
responded to more than 25 of our 120 missions. I can be called to
work a SAR mission anywhere in the state and for those missions that go
on for days we do in fact call SAR individual resources and teams from
across the state and even outside the state.

Every one of our 50 SAR teams lists at least one telephone number in
our state SAR resource directory. Each team can list a "first call"
number plus up to 4 telephone numbers for up to 4 contact persons:
for each person a work number, home number, cell number, and pager.
On average, to activate one SAR team I call 2 numbers and leave one
voicemail (on the first number I call).

Una Smith
New Mexico




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page