The Fundamentals of Search and Rescue

DEFINITION OF SAR

"Search and Rescue is the activity of locating and recovering persons either in distress, potential distress or missing and delivering them to a place of safety”

PICTURE: ERT SAR Members called out to search with the British Police in Gloucestershire.

Introduction

As long as there are people being caught out in unplanned, unexpected or threatening and vulnerable situations – there will be a need to have Search and Rescue. We love the people close to us and we want to do whatever is necessary to find them and bring them home when they are lost, missing or in distress.

This has gone on through the ages whenever we lose someone. Whether it is hundred missing in a mass disaster around the world or a child lost in a city shopping centre, those people are simply ‘must be found’ according to their friends, families and loved ones.

Search and Rescue teams ‘stand by’ around the clock, every day or the year, in all seasons and at all times of the day, and when they do, they go. They go quickly as if it was a lost family member.

A Canadian definition tells us that some searches do not require a rescue. And some rescues, occurred without a search. But the activities of Search and Rescue or SAR require a scientific and an intuitive and artistic approach. And it is a ‘team’ activity with every single rescuer on the end of a rope or out on a line or in the field – being supported and coordinated by teams with that rescuer, operationally and strategically. It is comforting to know that there are trained and coordinated people out there who will deploy at a moment’s notice any time or day or night and in any weather condition or terrain, to find and recover those missing people, to a place of safety.

There are innumerable Search and Rescue teams around the world with different technical specialities, different geographical working areas, different uniforms, kit and equipment, paid and unpaid, small and big – but they all there for the greater good and part of some sort of structure of emergency response.

They are there to bring people out of a bad situation and bring them home. As time has gone on we have developed improved techniques, studied statistics, used better equipment, improved our response, trained in our teams and got better and even more specialised.

This course gives an extensive foundation to the subject and more specifically deals with missing and lost persons in a GSAR environment.

Ground Search and Rescue (GSAR)

GSAR refers to searches for lost subjects on the ground, as opposed to air or water terrain (however, for some teams it may include ‘frozen water’ especially if the basis of their Ground SAR training is NFPA Wilderness SAR) and often 'near' water at awareness level but not specifically "in" water. (Many teams have added Water as a capability but this is a different hazard and speciofic discipline)

The conduct of a search and rescue operation to assist persons lost, stranded, trapped, or injured in an area on land, often other than mountainous or cavernous environments.

The terms "MisPer", "Missing Person" and "Lost" have specific definitions we will explore later but are often used interchangeably assuming a similar, meaning for the purposes of Search and Rescue.

This course is a comprehensive introduction to GROUND SEARCH AND RESCUE and specifically and introduction to how ERT Search and rescue does and teaches it.

Ground SAR: Profiling

In 1990 when I was on the Police in Canada I attended a course on Profiling Criminal Behaviour taught by the FBI. The information was incredible and offered a real insight into how people can predictably behave in a given situation under certain circumstances and as importantly – given certain characteristics of their personality. I learned a lot about other forms of investigative profiling and studied many of them like Graphology (personality traits in handwriting). Admittedly this was more the profiling behaviour of criminals and antisocial individuals and groups but the concepts of common characteristics and behaviour for predicting outcomes is very similar. So they you need to find out what happened? Did the person run away? Was there some fowl play? Were they taken? Are they safe? Can they fend for themselves? Do they want to be found?

In the late 1990’s we were looking for a Missing Person notified by Mr John Blake, Deputy Director of Security for the Sunnybrook Health Science Centre and Hospital in Toronto. An Alzheimer’s patient had gone missing on the very large grounds and was found in an outside building. An excellent response turned out an excellent result. By profile, many Alzheimer suffers tend to wander in a fairly straight line until they become ‘stuck’ and often do not see their way out. Knowing this the search was made of linear structures in line of sight of the exit and there he was found. It was also well lit compared to other areas adjacent to it and that’s known to be an ‘attraction’ too. In spite of the fact that he may have wandered anywhere, the hasty team, (first active search team on the ground), deployed immediate to the most ‘obvious’ place.

This concept has been studied and progressed by many from the SAR world in profiling certain behaviour from certain types of missing person. If you know you are searching for a very young child, you will know they will often not answer when they are called. (They are told not to talk to strangers and also don’t want to get in trouble.) Either way, very young children, say aged 3 years old, often don’t have the same concept of being lost as we do either. They often wander around without covering a lot of ground and can found closer to the last known place when lost. This profile obviously changes when the child is feared abducted. There are so many studies and sources of information out there on profiling missing persons.

These are really useful and I suggest, if you don’t already, you get some additional training from credible sources on the matter. Obviously it is not so good for missing persons who were abducted or went missing from a means other than their own, like a plane crash or boat lost at sea – but even then it can be useful as a source of information. It helps predict the behaviour path and likelihood of finding a Mis-Per (Missing Person) who falls into a certain category. This can be extreme useful as an operational search tool for responders and managers.

An introduction to the profiling of a missing person.

When someone goes missing there are an awful lot of questions which immediately come to mind. Everyone is curious to know what happened. Why did they go missing? How did they go missing? Where are they? And so on. Once we have asked these questions we can start to create a Missing Person profile.

Complete and Continue