[SaraHap] SARA Happenings December 2008

[Chris Hoare]

Hi All: 

SARA Happenings is issued to foster communication within the Search and Rescue community in Alberta. It is going to 328 e-mail addresses that are listed as the primary contact of SAR Alberta member groups or which were requested to be added to the mailing list.

Subscription and unsubscription information is at the end of the newsletter. 


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SEASON'S GREETINGS

Keep warm and stay out of the ditch.


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2009 PROVINCIAL CONFERENCE 

April 24 to 26 

Hosted by Parkland SAR 

see www.parklandsar.org or www.saralberta.org for info - register at www.ticketweb.ca 


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EMERGENCY CONTACTS

So your team is on a search and you've found out that your subject is
from the far end of the province. You'd like to ask the SAR team
there to spend some time with the family and help develop a subject
profile for you. Or your search is becoming really big, and you want
to ask for help from teams you don't work with so often. How are you
going to get a hold of other teams?

Do you know that you can have a list that tells you how to get a hold
of every SAR group in the province? Download it from

http://www.saralberta.org/emergency/index.html

Why not put a copy with your team's resource list or give copies to
your search managers?

Subscribe to the notification list and you'll be told every time
the list is updated.

http://castrov.dyndns.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sara-contactannounce
If you have any questions or see any corrections, contact
Brett Wuth <wuth at acm.org>.


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FROM THE PRESIDENT'S VISIT

New Zealand groups looking for Canadian Sister teams

In October I was invited to attend and speak at New Zealand's national search and rescue conference in Palmerston, North. The conference, held November 21-23, had a theme on partnerships and how organizations and government agencies work together. Two other international speakers were also invited, Mike Rose with the Devon Police, in England, and Sigurdur Olafur Sigurdsson - Siggi for short- from ICE-SAR the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue. Mike Rose's presentation focused on the policing partnerships being developed in his area and also around the issues of using search and rescue for evidence searches. Siggi discussed the history of Icelandic SAR - as a point of interest there are just over 350,000 people in Iceland and over 18,000 search and rescue volunteers. Both provided some great ideas that I think would be of value to teams in Alberta and I will be writing about them in the future.

New Zealand search and rescue has a great deal in common with SAR in Alberta. Though only a third of the size of Alberta they have about the same population base - however they have more teams than us - with over 70. The teams are very grass roots orientated and have a lot of autonomy, like here some work very well with their local police - others have a different relationship. Most groups started out as "tramping" clubs and evolved into SAR groups. Like us they have issues with training and standards as at this point there is no national standard for search and rescue in New Zealand. Like Alberta they have gone around and around on this issue but seem to be making some headway now with some new initiative by Land SAR and the government.

On a national scale New Zealand has created a National Search and Rescue Secretariat model on Canada's NSS and they also have a national volunteer organization - Land SAR- which represents the volunteers at a national level. There are a few key differences - there is only one police force in New Zealand but it is structured similar to the RCMP with regions set out that SAR teams belong to. Another difference is that Land SAR has hired staff and I was told at the conference that funding is about to be increased to help with both training and administrative issues. 

SARINZ, a not-for-profit training organization is another difference. They do the majority of training for search and rescue in the country at the moment and have been instrumental in developing material and courses in search and rescue. One of the key people with SARINZ is Ross Gordon who used to have a private company teaching SAR. He did his training with the folks from Washington State, the same people who are responsible for the training that originally came to Alberta - thus there are some major similarities in the way we do things. 

After the conference I had the opportunity to travel around the South Island of New Zealand meeting with different SAR teams. I was able to gather some great information that, again, I will be sharing as I think there are some really simple and very useful things teams here can learn. While talking to the teams, some suggested that they would like to hook up with a team in Canada to have as a sister team, I told them I thought that would be a great idea and would pass that on. So if you have a team that might be interested in sharing information and becoming a sister team with a team in New Zealand please let me know. There are only a few teams in this at the moment in New Zealand, but it was a rather informal request - so other teams may be interested as well. The New Zealand teams believe they can learn a lot from teams here - and I was told repeatedly that Canada is seen as one of the leaders in the world in search and rescue. Though we don't always value it, other countries see our ability to work in partnerships and to bring various organizations together as one of our greatest strengths. I was honored to speak on behalf of the volunteers in Alberta because I know, having traveled across Canada and to numerous other countries that we have some of the best SAR teams in the world right here. And despite all our issues when the call comes - we do work well together.

I will be writing more in the next few days to update you on SAR Alberta's activities - there have been some good things happening and some issues we need to deal with - but overall things are moving forward and I am looking forward to a productive new year.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and may your New Year be a happy and prosperous one.

Sincerely,

Monica mavada at cruzinternet.com 


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SARA HAPPENINGS SUBMISSIONS 

Our regular publication date for mailings of SARA Happenings is the middle of each month. Please note that the deadline for material is the 14th of each month. 


Does your group have an event posting for the SARA Happenings mailing? If so, please send information 1-1/2 months prior to the dates you wish advertised. It will then give ample time for those reading it to respond. 


Please send all material to the editor; Chris Hoare at choare at shaw.ca PLEASE DO include contact information for members to gain further information.




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