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The challenges of training for SAR volunteers

By Gerry Godsoe

It is 3:15 a.m. on a Sunday in November in the Gatineau Hills north of Ottawa. It’s cold, pitch black and everyone in the Command vehicle is using coffee to balance adrenaline and fatigue. The radio crackles, “Command, Command, this is Team Three with a priority message.” “Team Three Go.” “Command, we have located the missing hunter. Coordinates are: 48570 57835. He is in good shape, responsive, mobile and has no injuries. We are returning to Command.” “Copy that Team Three. Good job. Command out.”

Search and rescue (SAR) volunteers and professionals live to experience those moments. Happy endings represent ample compensation for all the administrative work, fundraising, promotion, recruitment, personal expense and time commitment. Whether you are the searcher who actually finds the missing person, or the treasurer who has been up late balancing the books, the sense of team accomplishment is overwhelming.

Training Program

Training is a key SAR component. For volunteer groups, training is a continuous process filled with numerous challenges. SAR Global 1 is a volunteer group based on both the Ontario and Quebec sides of the Ottawa River. All recruits go through a 50-hour training program designed to cover the basic training requirements of the Ontario and Quebec Volunteer SAR Associations and the Emergency Response Institute curriculum. The training covers the core skills of navigation, communications, first aid, survival, lost person behaviour and search techniques. The final day of the program entails a full group exercise from start to finish. It is designed to integrate the newcomers and put all the procedures to the test.

The basic SAR course is only the beginning. To keep individual and group skills up, monthly training during weekends is required, supplemented by indoor and outdoor evening sessions. The Training Committee must identify priorities, select training dates months in advance, obtain permits or permission and develop scenarios and instructional units.

Ongoing training focuses on many of the same skills taught in the basic SAR course but includes extras such as, first aid courses, team leadership courses, water/ice rescue, low angle rescue, search management and other specialties. In 2008, SAR Global 1 volunteers participated in almost 2,800 hours of training. Still, it is never enough to get the new folks fully confident and allow long-time members to review their knowledge and share their skills and experience with newcomers.

One of the biggest challenges for volunteer SAR training committees is the delivery of realistic training that will make volunteers want to come out for training on their days (or evenings) off, when they could be spending time with family, friends or getting caught up on household chores. Those who stay with SAR say they learn something new every time they get called out on a search or participate in training.

Another training challenge is to conduct inter-agency and inter-group training. SAR Global 1 straddles the Ontario-Quebec border and numerous police jurisdictions. It is also within close driving distance of several other volunteer SAR groups. It is very difficult to have SAR groups cross provincial lines even though the missing person(s) may have done so. Depending on the tasking agency, three searchers on a trail may be doing: a “Type 1 Search”, “A Hasty Search” or a “Track Crawl”. Even the basics of map reading may be different. Will that be UTM or MGRS? How many characters would you like in your map coordinates sir?

Joint exercise

On January 19, 2009, the Ottawa Police Service conducted a very successful large training event in the Marlborough Forest near Ottawa involving three volunteer SAR groups: Rideau Regional SAR, the Ottawa Valley SAR Dog Association and SAR Global 1. The exercise scenario was the case of a missing eight-year-old boy lost in an area of scrub growth riddled with trails.

The briefing tent is being set up for the joint exercise. Photo Credit: Ottawa Police Service

Approximately 50 Ottawa Police officers and 20 volunteers arrived early in the morning on a snowy rural side road. The police command and support vehicles were already in place and the search managers were hard at work planning. One of the major objectives for the day was to allow new search managers to gain the experience of being responsible for all aspects of a search.

As with military operations, planning and coordinating 70 people is a big job. The theory of the Incident Command System that clarifies roles and responsibilities helps search managers understand how things are supposed to work. However, there is no substitute for the hands-on experience and pressure of realistic training.

After signing in, six teams were assembled, including police service members and volunteers. One of the first tasks for all participants was to set up a large tent to act as a briefing area. The SAR Coordinator, Sergeant Roy Lalonde, then provided a briefing and short review of common GPS procedures. After the general briefing, team leaders briefed their own teams on their assignments and did a final equipment and radio check. Then off they went on snowshoes looking for clues and the missing person.

The six teams covered a lot of terrain and after several hours of trudging through deep snow, a clue – in the form of a faint human voice – was found. The searching phase, usually the longest and most difficult, was over. The boy was accessed, medical attention was quickly provided and the evacuation began. The difficulty of moving an injured or hypothermic person through the woods using human muscle power and the value of mechanized transport in the form of a snowmobile were once again demonstrated. On the way back to the Command Post, the teams were tasked to conduct other missions involving navigation, searching and communications skills.

Throughout this exercise, police service members and volunteers dealt with the same type of challenges including: information management, organizational capabilities, resource constraints, communications, difficult terrain and weather conditions, as well as command and control issues.

Both professionals and volunteers learned a great deal and realized that each has different strengths. For example, police service members have more experience in investigating missing person cases, while volunteers may be more at ease doing night navigation in the woods. Inter-group training opportunities such as this one are invaluable. Arriving at a search site in the middle of the night is not the time to meet the rest of your extended team for the first time or start to learn about different procedures.

Of course, there are also the intangibles that come with training and experience but can not be taught. How do you train volunteers to be willing to get out of bed and drive for two hours in a snow storm to look for a missing snowshoer? How do you teach them to be able to cope with finding a deceased person or comfort a distraught parent? Nevertheless, frequent, realistic and difficult training is an essential part of the development of SAR volunteer groups.

Gerry Godsoe lives in Ottawa. He has gained outdoor experience through scouting, camping and whitewater canoeing. He is a Search Manager and Training Director with Search and Rescue Global 1 (www.sarglobal1.ca).

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