Training and Communication Tools Enhance Search and Rescue Efforts

My name is Nathan Lawrence, and I work from ICOM America as a service technician. But on my nights and weekends, I volunteer with King County Search and Rescue. I got into volunteering with Search and Rescue, a little over thirteen years ago. I started off with a local community cert program and, you know, once I completed that training realized that unless we had a large area natural disaster that the training and effort that I was willing to invest just really wouldn't get used very often. I learned about, volunteering with search and rescue through a neighbor and good friend and joins the Explorer Search and Rescue training program and haven't looked back since. One of the largest communication challenges that we face in the field is the terrain that we, have most of our missions in. Probably over seventy percent of our missions are, along the I-ninety corridor here in Washington. And it's, generally mountainous terrain with lots of wonderful lush, foliage. And so propagation of RF, is already severely Added to that the natural train from a trailhead where a command post might be to where a subject might be located on another valley over, it makes it a constant challenge to make sure that we can always communicate with the field teams that are out looking to rescue someone. Our two way VHF radios are a life and death link between our command staff, the the sheriff's office that we work under, and the field teams that are out looking for a lost or injured subject. I personally love, my ICOM radios because they are incredibly reliable. The radios that I have in my truck, the handhelds that I personally own, they've been a lifeline that I know when I need to grab it and communicate something, whether that's to a command, base or to a team in the field, I know that I have the best possible chance of getting my signal through to them. A lot of the missions that we go on now, have changed from a search and rescue to a we know exactly where you are and rescue you. And so, data telemetry, tracking of field teams and their statuses search management, tracking of resources, and really being able to play that that large chess game of moving the pieces into the correct places, finding the subject that we need to rescue, and getting them back to a higher level of care. The event that we're at today, is a culmination of six months of training for our explorer search and rescue trainees. This weekend, functions as a series of of mock realistic missions that happen across a wide range of different terrains, with a wide range of, realistic scenarios with patient care. So to force them the opportunity to search for a missing subject, to participate in the patient care of someone, and most importantly,