From the way I write you would think that ALSAR is falling apart; I keep saying “one of the things we do badly is…”.
And guess what? Here is yet another thing that I believe ALSAR doesn’t do well at. Sharing knowledge; especially feedback and learning points from search exercise de-briefs and evaluations. But one of the newest ALSAR Units is going to lead the way on this.
Read on…
Rob asked me to provide a write up of the Isis SAR exercise earlier this month. I’m sorry it took so long to do – university got in the way…
On Sunday 6th December, Isis SAR’s first full search exercise took place. The RV was at Chinnor Cement works, Oxfordshire, and searchers attending were from WilSAR, Isis SAR, SEBEV and LSDogs. We also had three guests from Thames Valley Police Service and one from TASR – Technical and Specialist Rescue, who offer Isis training in water access and ropes. WilSAR brought their new control vehicle, along with their kayaks and bikes. Isis SAR brought the inflatable rib they have access to, in order to see if this was an effective manner to search larger areas of deep water, and also brought the new control vehicle, which had been so kindly donated by WilSAR earlier in the week.
The search was pre-planned, based on a scenario of a typical male despondent. Adrian Smith (WilSAR) and Jennie Webster (Isis SAR) drew up and roughly prioritised the sectors the day before to ensure that the exercise did not involve too much waiting around for searchers while all the planning took place. Although this did significantly cut down on the waiting around, there was still a delay while waiting for people to get there, as confirmation from a few more people had been received. This was a main learning point for control, not to wait next time and to brief those who were there at the RV time.
Thirty five searchers took part in the exercise, with three in control. Two “directors” were present to answer any questions from the police as to what ALSAR teams do. Ten teams were sent out to sectors. These comprised of a bike team, a kayak team, two dog teams, six foot teams and a boat team.
Eleven sectors were searched, four of which covered the 300m radius surrounding the place last seen, and so were covered by two different teams each. The kayak team and second dog team were both redeployed to second sectors, and control were in the process of redeploying further foot teams when reports came in that the misper had been located. The teams covered a large area in a small amount of time, demonstrating a high level of skill and current search knowledge in all the teams that were present.
The search area covered the 300m radius surrounding the PLS, significant reflectors within the 50% radius (where 50% of the misper category would have been found) and main routes and paths within this area. Feedback from teams was encouraging, and no one reported that the sectors were inappropriate. The qualified search controllers attending were happy with the pre-planned search areas and gave lots of constructive feedback on how to improve the exercise next time, e.g. getting teams out searching faster and being more assertive in control.
On a personal note, I really enjoyed the day and it was a really useful experience to be in control for the first time, especially working alongside such experienced search controllers. I hope to improve next time I get to run control on an exercise – with more of an idea of what happens it should all go better the second time. I felt it was good to have an exercise area where lots of different kinds of resources could go out on the ground and it was very good to be able to work with members of LSDogs and find out more about their capabilities.
I hope that everyone who attended had a good time and felt that it was a useful exercise and worth the long drives that quite a lot of people made. We’d like to thank everyone who came for supporting us, and especially the WilSAR members who helped us organise and run it.
If anyone is reading this who attended, I’d love to hear any comments on how the exercise was set up and run, any feedback, whether negative or positive, would be really useful.
