Foothills Search and Rescue has another milestone to its name after being recognized for 25 years of service.
The recognition came in the form of a plaque at the Search and Rescue Volunteer Association of Canada’s annual SAR C2C national conference, held in partnership with Alberta Search and Rescue at Rocky Mountain House from Sept. 13-15. The plaque was from Alberta Search and Rescue.
“It actually humbles me that the group has been together as long as it has,” said Nicole Jones, Foothills Search and Rescue (FSAR) president. “That it has managed to flow and change and respond to the way that it is needed and required for our tasking agencies, it is at least as relevant today as it was 25 years ago, if not more so.”
The team currently has 55 volunteers, 40 of which are operational members. Over the last five of those 25 years, FSAR has seen 71 search and rescue call outs, averaging 12,000 volunteer hours annually.
“The number of hours that all of the members put in on a regular basis to ensure that we have the capabilities to do everything that our tasking agencies ask us to do—I’m so honoured to be a part of this group,” Jones said.
Established in 1993, Jones said FSAR has seen its fair share of changes in that time, in membership and technology.
One of the more exciting technological additions to the unit was the new command post completed in June of this year. While it has yet to be used for a call out, Jones said it hasn’t been sitting idle.
“We’ve had it out on a couple training exercises,” she said. “We’ve figured out some really cool things on how to link the computers to get data to talk to each other, to help with our tasking agencies, and with planning for future things.”
Also in the FSAR arsenal are horses, ATVs, and boats to help cover any and all terrains they may be dispatched to, which certainly isn’t lacking for variety.
“Our search area is huge, we basically go as far east as Vulcan and Gleichen areas, so we go from the plains right up into Kananaskis, mountainous terrain,” she said. “So we’ve got that mix of everything, plus we’ve got rivers and lakes.”
The rivers can pose tactical challenges, she said, with water levels varying from a small stream that can be stepped over to a raging river from one day to the next due to flooding events.
“Snow, the shoulder seasons where you’ve got ice, it actually affects some of the specialty groups that we can call out,” said Jones. “We do have the equine group, that if it’s icy or super slippery with mud, it’s not good terrain for the horses.”
FSAR recently acquired boats as well, allowing the team to aid in recovery efforts for a man believed to have drowned after cliff jumping into Highwood River near Nature’s Hideaway Campground on June 30.
The unit has had nine call outs so far this year, not including the Nature’s Hideaway call out, which Jones said has not been closed out.
The most recent call out was for the Calgary Police Service on Sept. 26 for a joint South Central Region search (made up of Mountain View, Cochrane, Badlands, Calgary, and the Foothills).
Jones said the priority for that call out was to sweep the Bow River for clues for anyone who went missing along the river system during the year.
“In the fall the water volumes go down, so there are chances that we could find clues that we wouldn’t have been able to find earlier in the season,” she said.
Calling her team “professional volunteers” owing to the amount of training each member undertakes before being cleared to respond to call outs, Jones said the search techniques and communication protocols are only the beginning.
“Once you find the person, how do you prepare them to be rescued, and how do you get them out?” she said. “That’s the one thing that, with the technology that people have today, we’re starting to switch a little bit of the focus.
“We still do searching, but what we are finding and what we’re anticipating to increase is our rescue capability.”
That rescue capability includes basic first aid and triage ability, as well as getting the person to safety—which can include helicopters, horses, ATVS, or stretchers, or helping the subject to their feet and guiding them out.
Additionally, each member is trained to handle possible medical history complications.
“If they’re diabetic, for example, we need to understand how to treat that and what signs and symptoms are going to be shown,” she said. “If they don’t have food for a certain amount of time, they’re not going to be able to respond to us when we call out.
“So even though we anticipate this person should be mobile and alert, there’s that medical history that can change those things.”
For more information on FSAR, go to foothillssearchandrescue.com.
