Trending
ST. CLAIR -- First responders, law enforcement personnel and firefighters from near and far came together over the weekend at the Calcutta Fire Station and Beaver Creek State Park to begin search and rescue training, which will take place over two full weekends.
From Columbiana County there were five members from the Calcutta Volunteer Fire Department, one firefighter from the Liverpool Township Volunteer Fire Department, three members from Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency (EMA)'s CERT and a K9 deputy from the Columbiana County Sheriff's Office.
There were members of the Liam Search and Rescue from Ellwood, Pennsylvania, a K9 deputy from Lawerence County Sheriff's Office and a search and rescue volunteer from The Netherlands, along with members from other agencies outside of Columbiana County.
Janine Hindman, Liam Search and Rescue, said she is attending the training to get her certification and that she thinks the training is very good, everybody she has worked with during the first weekend of the training has been good, especially the Calcutta Firefighters. Jerry Whaley and his wife Sarah, Buckeye Emergency Response Training School (BERTS), are the instructors for the FUNSAR (Fundamental Search and Rescue Training), which is training on the national level with the trainees earning a national search and rescue certification. They will have the SAR-TEC II operational certification, Sarah Whaley said.
Jerry Whaley described the training as A to Z of search and rescue. The trainees will learn what it takes to know what to do when they get out to a search and rescue, how to navigate, basic survivor skills, man tracking back off a boot print or paw print of the individual or animal they are searching and learning clue awareness. To pass the certification trainees have to find and identify at least 50% of the clues they will be looking for.
Jerry Whaley noted that law enforcement and fire training typically only train to the 25 percentile in wilderness searches.
Robin Van-Bruggen, a search and rescue volunteer from Noord-Barbano in The Netherlands, said he came to St. Clair for the National Association for Search and Rescue (NASAR) search and rescue course, and he is seeking his certification in search and rescue and certification as a search and rescue instructor.
Van-Bruggen said the course is one of the only specific courses that is internationally available for search and rescue or one that is internationally recognized, and he wants to take the course back with him to Europe to have the capability of the course there.
"It's just necessary in order to develop a universal search and rescue response, to get universal search and research certification and recognition, to bring the course to the Netherlands and then train other search and rescue volunteers to have a universal center of advocacy certification and training," Van-Bruggen said.
Van-Bruggen noted that while the training is taught internationally, it's new to the Netherlands and the advocacy part of search and rescue is not as developed in Europe as it is in America.
"It highly requires that we have a unified voice so we can take and help volunteer teams and search and rescue in general to develop their training center so they can be recognized and have a more stable background for law enforcement to work with the teams," Van-Bruggen said.
The trainees spent Sunday afternoon out in the rain working on navigation and finding coordinates using magnetic north with compasses in what Jerry Whaley referred to as back yard training, in which the trainees built up confidence with their compasses in a field and in the woods at Beaver Creek State Park.
Chief Dave McCoy, Calcutta Volunteer Fire Department and organizer of the Columbiana County Search and Rescue Team, said he believes the training is a lot nicer than he expected and he is gaining a lot of information while meeting a lot of new people and hearing their experiences.
Capt. Shane Hamilton, Calcutta Volunteer Fire Department, said he was really enjoying the training and is excited to learn new stuff. He feels the training, some of which is a refresher for him, will adequately prepare him for a search and rescue.
Whaley said the navigation course was referred to as a back yard course because it can be set up anywhere. Each trainee will get a copy of the course to take back to their team to continue working on it.
An instructor guided them through finding an object at a specific coordinate or finding the coordinates for an object. If the trainees had a problem the instructors worked with them to figure out what wasn't working right and getting them on track.
In addition to finding their heading on a compass the trainees had to at the same time do a pace count in which they had to count and keep track of their steps to track distance.
Ivetka Fusco, Lawerence County K9 Search and Rescue, said she came out for the training to learn more and to become a member of NASAR. She is training to be better at what she does.
Fusco said the training has been fabulous in helping her refresh on skills she has known on some things she hasn't used in a water, such as map and compass.
"It's nice to refresh on things we have used in the past and may have to use especially if electronics fail," Fusco said. There's lots of good information as well in the other areas."
This weekend, the trainees will put not only their new navigational skills, but all the skills learned over the two weekends to the test when they have to go into the woods at night using their compasses to find a live victim.
"There are going to be a lot of skills between tonight, tomorrow and next Friday that we teach them, and they will use all of those skills to search," Whaley said. "Once they have found the victim, they are going to radio in that they found Boomer (the victim) and once they find Boomer, they are going to have to give us their coordinates."
Whaley explained pace counts will help that since it's quite difficult to tell someone where in the woods you are using a compass when it's dark. If they have a hard fix on directional coordinates, they can tell how many meters they are from the road to guide fire department, EMS or law enforcement to the victims and rescuers' locations.
Shannon Rambo, Columbina County CERT Team EMA, said she came to the training because she loves learning new skills.
"The more we can learn, the better we are going to be at whatever we are doing, whatever task is at hand," Rambo said.
Shannon noted that she is amazed by the training, and she loves it. "
They are amazing at teaching the class and just refreshing the skills of some things that we have already learned and learning new," she said.
The trainees will receive the certification at the end of the training when they successfully demonstrate the skills they were taught. At that point the Columbiana County Search and Rescue Team will be certified and ready to operate as a rescue team.
kgarabrandt@mojonews.com