ITRS 2011

Once again the International Technical Rescue Symposium met in November to discuss a variety of technical rescue topics. A few representatives from SBSAR were on hand to participate. Below are a sample of some of the presentations offered:

Empirically Derived Breaking Strengths for Basket Hitches and Wrap Three Pull Two Webbing Anchors

Does Nylon Lose 15% of its Strength When Wet?

Suspension Trauma Revisited

If you are interested in attending or presenting, the 2012 call for papers has been posted, and the registration will open soon. In 2012 the symposium will be in Seattle, WA.

SAR Volunteers Recognized

Efforts to integrate GIS with SAR mission operations recently took a leap forward. Read the details on the ESRI blog.

BSAR Oct 2011

More than 32 students graduated from October's BSAR Academy. This is the first certification that new SBSAR members must complete. Basic search techniques, survival skills, and land navigation are among the myriad topics covered.

Gift of Love 2011

As most of you know the Sheriff’s Gift of Love Program is Saturday, December 10, 2011. This is the 14th year of a very heartwarming and successful event, successful, due in part, to Search and Rescue’s participation.

Once again, I’m asking for your help in giving mothers and children, living in domestic violence shelters, a Christmas they wouldn’t have without us; a Christmas they’ll never forget. At a very dark and depressing time in their lives someone cared…We cared!

Here’s what I need:

Arrive at the location (distributed in email to your sbsar.org account), and be at your best. This means look sharp and be ready to have fun putting smiles on the young one’s faces, Mom’s too!

Please follow your chain of command and have ONE PERSON from each unit, which plans on participating, contact me with your resource numbers and info ASAP.

We give a gift of love that gets returned. You’ll never forget the child that hugs your leg and says, “Can I come home with you?”

Thanks for your many years of participation!

Mike Ward
SAR Council

BMC Field Test

BMC will be held at Snow Valley Ski Resort in Running Springs. The date is January 21-22 2012. Registration is required. Please contact Dave Alexander at Volunteer Forces 909-387-0678. In order to participate in BMC, an individual must be cleared by Dave Alexander a head of time.

Certification students: the weekend will be run similar to a SAR mission. There will not be scheduled food or toilet breaks. Eat, drink and rest on the fly throughout the day when rare opportunities present themselves. Wear slippery pants and jacket for ice axe arrest. You should show up at the parking area by at least 0630 with full packs in order to begin walking at 0700 on Saturday. You possibly will not have a significant break until you go to bed late that night. There are no toilet facilities where you will be camping. All human waste is to be packed out. Festivities for the second day begin just after sun up on  Sunday and will end in the afternoon. Our meeting location is at the western portion of the Snow Valley main parking lot at GPS NAD27, 0496308, 3786727. There is good cell phone coverage. The 155 radios will be monitored on channel 11, TAC 1. Consider sleeping at that location next to your car on Friday night in order to assist with acclimatization. Participants must officially check out on Sunday in order to receive credit.

Recertification students: in order to participate, registration is mandatory with Dave Alexander at  Volunteer Forces. Please do not simply show up at the site hoping to be tested. Be prepared to begin walking at 0700 on Sunday. Meet at the location noted above. Consider sleeping next to your car on Saturday night to assist with acclimatization. This is a test. Instruction will not be given. Feel free to join the certification students on Saturday if needed. Any avalanche beacon can be used for the test. It is  strongly suggested you test with a device you are intimately familiar with. Wear slippery pants and jacket for ice axe arrest. The test will end late Sunday afternoon. Only registrants who officially check out will be given credit.

For more information please contact Sonny Lawrence at email: slawrence AT sbsar
DOT org or phone 909-255-6036.

Whitten Recognized for SAR Service

Cpl. Dan Whitten was recognized at the last IESARC meeting for his service at Volunteer Forces. He is now fighting crime in Yucaipa. I am certain that his new hat strikes fear in the hearts of criminals everywhere.

Director's Dialogue November 2011

The months of September and October were very busy months for the members of our SAR units. There were numerous countywide callouts, unit activities and department wide events going on continuously over these last two months. The Sheriff’s Rodeo, SAR City, BSAR and The Sheriff Jamboree Ride did in-fact manage to keep our members very busy, along with the various callouts.

However, unfortunately, the 6th Annual Countywide MSAR Training was once again cancelled due to a countywide callout on the same day and at the same location that the training was to be held. This, along with the same training that was cancelled due to an equine virus earlier this year, was very disappointing. The members of the Apple Valley Posse on both occasions have had the training already to go when they have been notified of this news. But, giving them credit that they so richly deserve, they are undeterred and are bound and determined to still host this training at yet another time. This will be determined by them and our MSAR Committee in the near future. I would like to thank all of members of their unit for their hard work and determination.

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Using Your Android Phone as a SAR Pager

Updated on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 12:34 by Jeff Lehman

One of the great things about pagers is their optimization for doing a single thing. They sit there silent until they are called upon to roust us out of whatever we are doing. Contrast this with your smartphone. A device that is used to check email, make phone calls, surf the web, and play games. It is the antithesis of your trusty pager. With all of its fancy features, most smartphones are not well-adapted to making sure that they make enough noise to wake up up in the middle of the night, or alert you if you happen to miss the anemic tone they emit. To press them into pager duty, we will have to download additional help. A non-smart (dumb?) phone can also receive the messages mentioned here, but applications cannot be installed on these sorts of phones.

First, the ideas presented here require that your team use some sort of text message callout system. Such a system sends everybody a text message with a common text string. [By the way, ALL county teams have access to this functionality. It has been used in the county for 10 years, and you can read about it here.  Contact Jeff Lehman for info]. For example, on my team all callout messages have the string, "[Callout]" in the subject. This is automatically placed there by the mail list that is used to distribute the messages. Having this string enables you to set up your phone so that only messages with "[Callout]" in them make your phone ring at all hours of the night. This keeps you from being shaken awake by an SMS (text) spam message in the middle of the night.

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All-Posse Mounted Training

The MSAR committee is proud to announce an All Posse Mounted Training, held on Oct 22, 2011 at the Mojave Forks Regional Park, off Hwy 173 in the Cajon Pass area.  This event is presented by the Apple Valley Mounted Posse and will cover all types of mounted SAR techniques including a helicopter extraction of a victim following a search scenario and a presentation of the uses of pack animals in SAR. Sign in starts at 0700.  The exercise will start at 0800 so please be early and ready to go.  We will refresh some old ideas and present many new techniques that may be very helpful for future successes. Lunch will be provided by the Apple Valley Posse.  To help defray the cost for food, Apple Valley Posse has already received $100 donation from each participating Posse. There is no fee for the individual participant.  Please support this valuable training with your participation.  Many hours of preplanning have been spent to guarantee an educational and fun exercise. We need a head count ASAP so please send your participant roster to; Commander Roy Nuckols, Apple Valley Posse, 17087 State Highway 173, Hesperia, Ca.  92345. rnuckols@sbsar.org

Rescue on San G

WOW!!!!! This hike had all the makings of a made for TV movie. We had action, adventure, drama and even a reunion scene that would have made a grown man cry. You name it and it was there.

View Fish Creek and San G in a larger map
The hike started out innocently enough; we met at the Mill Creek Ranger Station at 5:30 a.m so we could get an early start to the trailhead for Fish Creek. We left the ranger station at 5:42 a.m and after a brief stop at the restrooms at the South Fork Trailhead on Jenks Lake Rd we arrived at the Fish Creek trailhead at 7:00 a.m. The drawback to getting an early start is the restrooms at the ranger station aren’t open and there aren’t any restrooms at the trailhead, something to keep in mind if anyone who reads this needs it for future reference. To get to the trailhead you take highway 38 from the ranger station approximately 24 miles to the turnoff for Heart Bar Campground which is on road 1N02. Once you get past the campground it requires a 7 mile drive on dirt road 1N05 to get to the trailhead. There were quite a few cars in the parking area when we got there so apparently a lot of other folks had the same idea. It was a beautiful day and not a cloud in the sky. The sun was shining brightly and it was a cool 60 degrees. We hit the trail at 7:15 a.m. The elevation at the trailhead is 8061’.

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