Area emergency workers get preparative search lesson

Rescue personnel combed through brush and branches in the woods of Argyle Lake State Park as they searched for a lost mannequin on a cold Sunday morning.

Split into teams, they chattered back and forth through radios, fanning out in search for clues that would lead them to their target. The reason for the search was simple: Preparative training.

The practical part of the Illinois Search and Rescue Council’s Ground Search and Rescue Class, a 16-hour course aimed at making local search and rescue efforts more effective and efficient, according to Josh Balk with the Bushnell Fire Department.

“What we’re trying to stress is the difference between an untrained person searching versus actually stopping and doing the search sequences,” Balk explained. “Some people go out and search for missing people. We search for clues that lead us to a missing person.”

According to the ISRC, an untrained searcher has about a 20- to 35-percent chance of locating a missing person versus a trained searcher’s 75- to 80-percent chance. With an average of 200 people reported missing in Illinois each year, the training is seen as important to those involved with local rescue.

Commonly, Balk said, those that get lost are children, those that are camping and are unprepared, or the elderly with mental disorders. However, hunters, hikers, or odd cases such as farmers getting lost in corn fields are cases local rescue units might see.

Balk said that this year has been good as far as missing persons have gone but the numbers have a tendency to fluctuate. Readiness is key to making sure that those that go missing during bad weather conditions are found as quickly as possible, he said.

Curt Hannig of the Brown County Emergency Management Agency said these classes are held throughout the state and sometimes even in Missouri. Hannig explained that county-wide search and rescue efforts are in an infancy stage still so getting doing the classes is vital to getting good search and rescue teams active when they are needed.

“In some counties, if they’re not familiar with what we do, there may be a delay in notifying the proper teams in order to get them out quickly,” Hannig said. “If a person is missing on a day like this, it probably will not be long before you have bad consequences due to exposure and lack of preparedness.”

Sunday’s class drew out rescue professionals from neighboring counties, with at least one firefighter that came from as far as Pike County. It also attracted professionals of all varieties, with members of the Medical Reserve Corp, first responders, and the health department all working together to learn the most effective search and rescue techniques.

The class teaches important communication and line-of-sight skills that insures teams can quickly relay information to each other while searching as far as possible. Using time and resources properly is a key component of the class, Hannig said.

This class also makes it easy for those trained in search and rescue to quickly organize in a time of emergency, according to participant George Dixon.

“The biggest thing we’ve learned is how to organize a rescue,” Dixon said. “Just walking through the timber is not going to do the job. We’ve got a system where they can move through the timber and feel comfortable we’ve covered it without walking by something.”

The techniques certainly did appear effective, as one team found their target within 15 to 20 minutes of starting, one of the fastest times Balk had seen. The target was reset and the team began another search shortly after.

Hannig said this class had returned to Macomb for the last three years and each year it drew out more rescue professionals to add to the county’s preparedness. Those participating in the class stressed that information was valuable towards having more effective search and rescue operations.

“Here in Colchester you have Argyle State Park and I can only assume people can get disoriented and get lost,” said Scott Lanman, who was participating in the class. “You have to be ready at a moment’s notice and that’s when this training pays off.”

Reach Nick Draper via email at ndraper@McDonoughVoice.com, or follow him on Twitter @nick_draper.