You may remember a long while back me writing a short news article introducing a Specialist Night / Low Light Search Technician Certification Course from Gary Foo. Several comments were made at the time, with Jennie Webster making the valid point that;

Maybe explicit courses such as this would make it more obvious that ALSAR teams can and do search at night?

It’s a good idea in principle, although other courses e.g. UKLSI search techician and team leader have their main exercise at night anyway, and stress the importance of night search too.

The purpose of this piece then is to reiterate that ALSAR and other SAR organisations not only routinely search at night – but actually expect search to continue through the night. As I noted in my piece on do the police suspend vulnerable missing person search too quickly some advice from the ACPO guidance, which I think is worth repeating here…

As a general principle, searching should take place throughout the day and night. This will be determined by the circumstances but in all cases where a full managed search is undertaken, there must be valid reasons why it is not continued throughout the full 24 hours.
ACPO Guidance on the Managment, Recording and Investigation of Missing Persons, 2005

Here is also a quote from the book of the week – Greg Fuller, Ed Johnson and Robert J Koester’s book Man-Trackers and Dog Handlers in Search & Rescue – Basic Guidelines and Information.

…night itself should not be a concern to trained searchers. The possibility of walking off a drop-off and branches snapping back into searchers’ eyes are the chief concerns. All of these concerns exist during the daylight hours…

It is true that searchers will have a greatly reduced POD during night-time searches. However, it is important to remember that POD is NOT the aim of the search. The aim of search is to drive up POS as quickly as possible (FIND THE MISPER!). Waiting 6 -8 hours in order to get a higher POD means that the misper will not be found during those hours. The misper’s only chance of being found is if searchers are actually out searching!

ALSAR teams train at night, they search at night and they find mispers at NIGHT!

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