Search exercise planners handbook – Part Four
or Terrain Analysis for Search Exercises
Once you have selected your search area, looked at the practicalities of holding the search exercise and gone about gaining the required permissions, you need to undertake a terrain analysis of the whole search area. You will need to look at the possible search sectors, the hazards and the health & safety for the search exercise.
Planning a search exercise requires a good knowledge of Search Control / Search Management. Because at this stage you are going to need to sit down with a map and try to think like the Control Team and work out the various ways in which they might sector the map. [Do not sector the map for them; they need the practice. Just look at what they might potentially do]
Are there sufficient search sectors for the numbers expected on the exercise? Or are there too many; too large? and so on. This is a difficult job. You will need to be able to look at a map, and indeed on the ground, and be able to estimate search times for the terrain/conditions. Getting an exercise right means being able to judge how long it will take to search the ground, and not relying too often on “intelligence gathered” or “sightings” to put teams in the right area. [How realistic is that?]
You will need to get out on the ground. This will help you to do the above, but what you really need to be doing is looking for those hazards and health and safety issues that just cannot be seen from a map.
This is not to say we should wrap our searchers up in cotton wool – it is possible to have a perfectly safe search (and search exercise); just don’t do it and leave the misper to it. Or we could trust our searchers to make sensible risk managment decisions on the ground?
What you are really trying to do is identify any potential issues, hazards and health & safety issues in order to decide beforehand how to manage them. It might be briefing the search control team prior to the exercise or it might just be ensuring suitable PPE is available if and when the issue is identified. Either way, knowing in advance is best.
ALSAR Units should have a generic risk assessment for search. However, anyone planning an exercise should carry out their own risk assessment for the exercise. Ask those, What If? questions. Do we need first aid cover? Do we need a safety team available? Where is the nearest hospital? and so on.
As I said before, better to prepare in advance, than rely solely upon your searchers’ professionalism all the time; they DESERVE BETTER!
Return to Search Exercise Planners Handbook Index
November 11, 2009
· 
Robert Bradley · 
No Comments
Tags: ALSAR, Generic Risk Assessment for Search, Health and Safety, SAR First Aid, Search Control, Search Exercise, Search Exercise Planners Handbook, Search Hazards, Search Management, Search PPE, Search Sector, Search Training, Terrain Analysis · Posted in: Search Thoughts, Search Training
Leave a Reply