SAR Blogs & Mission Episodes (& Update on the Search for Abisha)

Here's a search and rescue website some of you may not have stumbled upon yet. It's called Call Out.

Call Out provides teams across British Columbia, Canada, with small camcorders and tiny helmet cams. Each participating team usually designates one or two of its members as camera operators. When there's a Search and Rescue mission, the camera person shoots as much footage as possible without compromising the rescue operation. Then, if it turns out to be what Call Out considers a good rescue story, their production team meets with the SAR team and the subjects to film interviews, and a short re-creation is often staged to fill in the gaps in the footage.

View Call Out episodes

On Call Out, you can also read blogs by "SAR Advocates," who "share their passion for Search and Rescue whether they are actively participating on a team or not, applying their knowledge and extensive experience to assist the SAR community in meeting the multi-faceted challenges involved in saving lives."
 
You can follow Call Out on Facebook and Twitter also.

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Update on the search for Abisha Ray Mounce:

Several months ago, I posted about this missing person case after being contacted by Abisha's mom, Ingmar, who was spreading the word about her son. Abisha had been missing since October 2007. His vehicle had been found along the Continental Divide Trail, parked at North Crestone Trailhead just north of Crestone, Colorado. An extensive search, both by SAR teams and by a friend of Abisha's, had turned up no clues.

A few days ago, I received this comment from Ingmar on that former post:

"Remains, likely Abisha's, were found last Monday. Thank you all for your SAR service. It is an important thing for us family members of people who go missing"

She referenced the Valley Courier story: Missing Atlanta Man Presumed Dead in San Luis Valley

A SAR Volunteer Loses His Life During a Search

This morning, I found out that Arizona Mounted Search & Rescue volunteer, Lloyd Reese, 77, died during a mission this past Tuesday. Lloyd was a member of the Gila County Sheriff's Office Mounted Posse, which was formed in 1967.

Woolsey was leading his horse across an old dam in a remote location when he slipped and fell approximately 20 feet onto the rocks below. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Frank Woolsey was participating in the search for a 56-year-old man who left his home near Payson, Arizona, on an ATV sometime around 10 a.m. on April 1st. The following afternoon, a neighbor contacted the sheriff’s office, stating that he'd not heard from the man since, and he didn't appear to be prepared for an extended trip.

For more information on Lloyd Reese's death and the mission he was on, see: Volunteer Dies During Search and Rescue Tuesday

Youth In SAR

I used to think you had to be 18 in order to participate in search and rescue. But now I know that assumption was wrong. In fact, there are whole teams made up of youth volunteers.

Take Long Beach Search & Rescue, for example. From their website:

Long Beach Search & Rescue "provides young adults with an opportunity to serve the public during emergency situations while encouraging them to explore career possibilities in the law enforcement, fire protection and emergency medical services fields. Long Beach Search & Rescue is an award-winning Learning for Life Explorer Post co-sponsored by the Long Beach Police Motor Patrol and Long Beach Firefighter's Associations." All applicants must be between the ages of 15 and 18 and maintain at least a C grade point average in school, among other requirements.

There's also Explorer Post 2002, a youth Search and Rescue team sponsored by the Sonoma County, California, Sheriff's Department. After finding this team, I then did a search for Explorer Search And Rescue (ESAR) and found youth SAR teams all over the country, including but not limited to Arkansas ESAR, Washington ESAR, and King County ESAR, the first youth-based search and rescue team in the nation, established in 1954.

Some states, such as New York, don't accept SAR applicants who are under 18 years of age. However, organizations such as Boy Scouts of America and Civil Air Patrol do have units around the country that have Search and Rescue training tracks that minors can get involved with. Explorer Search and Rescue (ESAR) teams are made up of teens--boys and girls--in the Learning for Life program, a subsidiary of the Boy Scouts of America, who are trained and deployed for search and rescue missions. 

Here are news stories about two young and accomplished SAR volunteers:

Arizona Teen and her Search Dog Pass National Certification: After completing her ground searcher certification, 16-year-old Taylor Lane of Sonoran Search & Rescue submitted an application to the Paws of Life Foundation's program to pair canine handlers with dogs. Lane and her search and rescue dog recently passed NASAR's Canine Sartech I evaluation.

To the Rescue! A young search-and-rescue-volunteer comes to the aid of lost or injured hikers in northern California: Now 18, Tamsen Bell started with Marin Search & Rescue when she was 14 years old, the youngest age at which one can join. When Bell was 16 years old, she took a lead role in a SAR mission involving a 60-year-old hiker who fell 50 feet off a cliff and landed on a mountain ledge, breaking part of her neck and suffering other injuries. Bell then slid down a steep part of the mountain to get to where the injured woman lay. She then examined the victim to find out what kinds of injuries she had suffered and decided the best way to transport her to safety.

Thank You, Search & Rescue Families

Tomorrow, I'll be re-joining a search that's been going on now for eight days. This will be my fourth full day on this mission, as our SAR team and other teams from around the state of Arizona, the Forest Service, Civil Air Patrol, DPS and a number of other individuals and organizations search for a man who went missing when he left for a customary short ATV ride in the area of his rural second home. (You can read more on that story as well as comments from the missing man's friends and family on my blog, Deb's Search & Rescue Stories). Many of my teammates also have spent multiple days participating in this mission, and many of those volunteers have families of their own waiting for them at home.

So I've been thinking a lot lately about the sacrifices that SAR spouses and children often make and really appreciating my husband for his support, not to mention the interest he takes in my never-ending stories.

Which made me take special notice of an excerpt from a book I'm currently reading, Mountain High, Mountain Rescue by Peggy Parr, published in 1987 but very much applicable to today's SAR experience (other than perhaps the number of women who participate). She writes:

"The patience of a husband or wife at home is often forgotten, yet this is a vital ingredient to the team's accomplishments in the field. Since so few women join and most are single, a spouse is usually a woman. The team often rates high in a husband's life--a wife detests the orange shirt as her competition--however, "the other woman" is a mission.

Sleeping spouses, unmoved by adrenaline, are awakened in the depth of night by a pager's piercing tone giving an emergency message ... and subjected to the noise of frantic dressing and departure. If the spouse wants the car, chauffeuring is necessary. During the day the tone shatters silence at the sermon, the movie and the restaurant. Dinners turn cold, picnics are cancelled, guests are left waiting. Bachelors should contemplate this neglect a spouse suffers.

After a mission, the spouse is forced to listen to endless phone calls from other members, where details are dissected like a frog. Gear is spread across the floor as in a garage sale. Two-hundred-foot nylon ropes are cleaned in the washing machine, and hang for days drying in spaghetti coils from the basement ceiling.

The spouse tolerates these annoyances with a patience worthy of sainthood. Members are aware of these qualities, for we take their spirit with us always."

Amen to that.

In the News: YOSAR Member Honored

Not long after posting the recent entry featuring Yosemite Search & Rescue, I came across an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about Ranger John Dill, a member of the team who helped develop the Search & Rescue program. The article, entitled, "U.S. honors Yosemite search and rescue ranger," highlights some of Dill's most significant missions, including the 1982 rescue of 10-year-old Donnie Priest in the wreckage of his parents' plane on 12,057-foot White Mountain. The article begins....

"Danger is a constant in Yosemite National Park, where the towering cliffs, thundering waterfalls and rugged wilderness combine with an unusual knack among humans to stumble into horrifying predicaments.

Nobody knows that better than John Dill, who has been involved in almost every significant rescue in the park over the past 38 years, predating the formation of the esteemed Yosemite Search and Rescue team, of which he is an integral part."

Read more....