By Sara Keddy
NovaNewsNow.com
There’s just one thing you really need to be a search and rescue volunteer.
“I’ll tell you what it is, just that one characteristic,” Fred Bond says. ”You have to care about others so much, you just can’t stay home when someone needs you.”
Even after 12 hours, when you’re supposed to shift off to a new crew, “many of them won’t go home.
“You could be gone for days - you just drop everything and go.”
Has Bond ever come upon a lost person, first to find them after a lengthy, worrisome search?
“Oh, let me tell you - I found five people one night at 2:30 a.m. on Cape Blomidon in a bad fog. They were all in.
“I was just as relieved as they were. Any search where you find people alive is a good search.”
Bond is a search director with Valley Search and Rescue, based at the Kings County Municipal Airport in Cambridge. While he’s been searching since 1960, he’s been a member of this team since 1986.
“Things are a lot different - searches then were random, we’d signal to each other with guns. Now, there’s a science. Investigation is huge, from start to finish: each person has a different age, background, health problems.”
Computer skills play a role in today’s searches. Search teams carry GPS technology with them: “we can track every step they take in the woods,” Bond says.
Mapping, gridding, calculating search patterns and procedures have all come a long way.
Other volunteers are trained in a range of areas: search management, wilderness survival, map and compass, first aid, fist responder, diving and underwater camera work, amateur radio, tracking, rock climbing and even metal-detecting. Volunteers help RCMP with evidence-based searches when needed, and there are dog teams and even horse-riding searchers.
“If you have a skill, there’s a job for you with search and rescue.”
Bond acknowledges his own role is “one the rest of the team might not agree with - I’m 71, and I’m in no shape to be in the woods, but I look after the team and tell them what to do.”
His second role is as chaplain, something he’s done since he joined.
“There are some hard things about this. We had a young search captain out and, on his first search, he found the person - dead. That’s tough, but we help each other. You have to.”
Search director and a team founder from 1971 David Walsh says volunteers know from the get-go what they could be in for, but there’s a reward in the end for the stress, worry and exposure to the not so nice.
“Even if a search turns out badly, it’s still good: there’s an answer, it ends worry and a big question for families.
“At least people know.”
The challenges
The team is always looking for ways to better train and equip its members; a constant struggle.
“I spoke to someone in Halifax, in government, one time about a grant, and he asked me, ‘What do you do?’” Bond says.
Walsh says the volunteers have put a lot of time and effort into building the team’s resources, and there have also been significant contributions from the community - main funders are the County of Kings, Annapolis Valley First Nations and the Emergency Measures Organization, but smaller groups like the Coldbrook Lions “have been very good to us.
“We run on a shoestring, we’re training all the time and people don’t know it ‘til they need us.” - David Walsh
“We just got a donation from a man - we’d done a search, and he thanked us very much. We’re glad to get the donation - but we were gladder to find him.”
They’re trying to add dry suits, wet suits and survival suits now - for searchers and the ones we find, Bond says. “It could take hours to get ‘em out, and they’d make a big difference.”
The latest upgrade was a new Argo, an amphibious all-terrain vehicle that can take a handful of searchers to hard-to-reach places, with their gear, and even carry a strapped on stretcher should it be needed. The team now has a zodiac. However, a tire went on its bus: Walsh says it’s been patched, but “there’s just no money for a new tire right now.
“We run on a shoestring, we’re training all the time and people don’t know it ‘til they need us.”
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Search them out
Valley Search and Rescue is holding an open house Sunday, July 18 at its headquarters in Cambridge, on the grounds of the Kings County Municipal Airport.
Volunteers invite the public in to view their equipment, find out about modern search and rescue training and techniques and even ask them about what it takes to get involved.
Drop in between 1 and 4 p.m.
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