Emergency Management Services News

May 01, 2007

Benton County Search and Rescue Students Graduate

April 30, 2007 – Benton County, OR. Twelve rugged individuals demonstrated their wilderness survival mettle as they completed nearly 100 hours of Oregon State Search and Rescue certification training this weekend with an overnight field exercise in the shadow of Mary’s Peak. In the final field exam, students spend a full day conducting mock searches in difficult terrain while carrying full packs of their own survival gear. At the end of the day, each student must construct a shelter, gather firewood and prepare a place to care for their mock rescue victim overnight. Fires must stay lit throughout the night in spite of pouring rain, frustrating winds and wet firewood.

Blaine Brassfield, Lacey Duncan, Jonathan Ellinger, Ellen Gradison, Jonathan Hoy, Nate Meehan, Susan Peck, Betsy Reid, Don Reid, Carol Scharfer, Michael Sell and Gabe Wesson all spent one evening and one weekend day each week learning the skills required in Oregon to become certified Search and Rescue volunteers. Courses are taught by local experts and include search techniques, communications, wilderness navigation, finding downed aircraft, Incident Command System, environmental injuries and illness, CPR and First Aid, rescue techniques, working with rescue helicopters, crime scene considerations, building shelters and fire, working with canines and horses on searches, human tracking, signaling and critical incident stress management among other subjects. Most of the students are existing or new volunteers in one of the Benton County Search and Rescue units, however occasionally a student will be interest in simply improving their own wilderness survival skills because they hunt, hike or participate in activities where the knowledge could be life-saving.

Benton County Emergency Management, Search and Rescue offers the Basic Search and Rescue Certification Course once a year, generally from February to April. The primary goal of the course is to provide certification training for local search and rescue responders who belong to one of seven units: Benton County Amateur Radio Emergency Service, Benton County Crisis Response Team, Benton County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse, Benton County Tracking Unit, Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit, Marys Peak Search and Rescue and Northwest Search Dogs, Inc. Benton County Emergency Management, Search and Rescue, a division of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, is responsible for search and rescue activities in Benton County and also provides mutual aid to other jurisdictions upon request. Under normal circumstances, Benton County searchers must be State Search and Rescue Certified to participate in a missing person or evidence search operation.

While searches in Benton County are relatively infrequent, they do occur and are often a race against time to get to the missing person. The last Benton County search was in November of 2006 when a mushroom picker in a remote area of south Benton County was found by the faint glimmer of his I-Pod. Caught in peripheral vision by Matt Crawford of Corvallis Mountain Rescue, a flank member of one search team, “We all thought it was the glimmer of moonlight on a leaf at first,” said Todd Shechter of Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit and Marys Peak Search and Rescue. Thanks to the alert searchers, the young man was found before he became hypothermic that night. He was dressed in street clothes, was wet and cold from trying to numb painful feet in a creek, and had used up his cell phone batteries tying to use it as a flashlight. “It was a very cold night in the coast range in November. He’s a lucky man,” said Acting Program Manager Peggy Peirson.

Too often being ill-prepared to be out in the wilderness contributes to the need for an aggressive search and rescue mission. “That, and people wait to call us,” said Peirson, first trying to find the missing person on their own or hoping that they will walk out. “As night falls, temperatures drop, conditions degrade and navigation becomes harder and more dangerous, everyone is put at greater risk – missing person and searchers alike. We would prefer that people call sooner than later for all concerned.”

More recently, Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit (CMRU) assisted in two Mt. Hood searches for climbers. Fewer Mountain Rescue resources in Oregon with mountain-specific technical skills and CMRU’s reputation for skill and professionalism mean that they are often called upon to assist other jurisdictions.

Benton County Search and Rescue volunteers are on-call 24 hours a day, every day and can often respond to the call for a search in under an hour, equipped and ready to go. “It’s a special kind of person that does this work,” according to Peirson, “and this is no ordinary volunteer job. These folks are highly skilled and equipped and they put their lives on the line for others. The only compensation any of them look for is bringing the missing person home. They’re my heroes.”

For more information on Benton County Search and Rescue and wilderness survival visit: http://www.co.benton.or.us/sheriff/ems/sar.php

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