Keweenaw Report Your Source for Local News and Sports
Practice practice practice. Its the mantra of search and rescue responders throughout the Keweenaw Peninsula. Over the weekend four agencies in the region met at Chassell Schools to run a missing person scenario, and practice their skills and search techniques.
“We’re working together to not only promote the coordination of search efforts in the region, but also to so we all know how we all operate. And so when we are out in the field on a real incident, we can work a lot closer, and better together. And we know what the capabilities of each team is. One of the other great opportunities of this is, we have members who may not have experience in certain roles, such as being in charge of an incident or being a team leader on a search party. We can take those people and put them in positions that they haven’t been in before in a low risk environment.” – Darian Reed, President, Superior Search and Rescue (SSAR)
Part of this search included real residents acting in the roles of the missing persons, family members, outside agencies that could provide or deny assistance, and local media. SSAR President Darian reed says they wanted to run a simulated case as close to real life as possible. Focusing on honing skills used during a real missing person case.
“And then we are also using some real world examples of data that may not always be correct. For example, today our team asked for a cell phone ping. And we had given them a cell phone ping that existed miles away. To show that there is a chance for unreliable data to come in, and how to work around that. We do base a lot of our search exercises on prior real world incidents. We use those as a basis, and then we add in different changes just to challenge the individuals involved in the incident training.” – Darian Reed, President, Superior Search and Rescue (SSAR)
Superior Search and Rescue, the Houghton County and Keweenaw County sheriff departments, and Keweenaw Search and Rescue often train together. And often work together in the field at various incidents, and use each other strengths and weaknesses to operate a search party. SSAR holds monthly classroom instruction and field exercises, each lasting a couple of hours during selected training days. Field training often takes longer, depending on the training exercise and scenario being used. Search and Rescue operations in the Upper Peninsula are mostly volunteer based. If you want to learn more about Superior Search and Rescue its training programs, and how to get involved, find more information below.
Superior Search and Rescue would also like to extend a thank you to each of the individuals that helped with the training exercise.
