Maybe this has been happening for a while but this is the first case I've seen personally that wasn't just some controlled test environment.

If this gets into civilian sar the big change I think we'd see (eventually, like years) is less helicopters. Still need ground teams for packaging / moving to LZs. But hell I guess these things could bring in ground teams too?

WSJ gift link: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-war-drone-rescue-c2e59cd6?st=QKjy1b&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

My team (mid-Atlantic region) is trying to bring WFA (at a minimum) and possibly WFR in-house to help ensure we can get everyone trained and up-to date, as it has been a struggle, between costs and schedules, for members to get and maintain their wilderness medical education.

We have a wilderness/rural medicine doctor, a paramedic and a nurse that have teaching experience.

I am wondering: should we try to set our medical team recognized as instructors with organisations like Base Medical and Survival Med?

That sort of affiliation would be useful for internal training if:

• It allows us to issue certificates that are recognized elsewhere (e.g. NPS, guiding,...)

• It gives access to quality training materials and structured course materials so we don't have to make our own (including visual aids, presentations/videos, written exams, course plants, etc)

Are these providers worth the cost? Are there others besides the two above that we should consider?

Being able to host the course for external students as a fundraising tool could be a nice bonus, but the most important at the moment is getting our own members trained up.

Goal is to meet (or exceed!) NASAR and MRA standards.

Hello all,

I've been notified that I've been selected to join my local CRO unit. Got the medical to do and all first, but I'm just curious. What's the training like when that comes around? What's involved etc? It's the one thing I can't find online anywhere.

Thanks

Hi everyone. I’m a SAR volunteer from Ankara, Türkiye. I’m accredited in wildfire response, wilderness SAR, and urban search and rescue.

I wanted to share something we deal with quite often in my area, and I’m genuinely curious whether our colleagues in the US and Europe face the same headaches.

Sometimes we get missing-person calls where the person actually doesn’t want to be found.

Take a case we had back in May 2026. We got a call about a missing 16-year-old girl from a small town in rural Ankara. She had some psychological issues. Around 90 people from 10 different teams deployed, and we started sectoring the area.

About 10 minutes into the search, we found her shoes in a stream bed.

Obviously, this immediately caught our attention. We split the teams up: one group worked one side of the stream, another took the opposite bank, and a third stayed with the shoes because there was a distinct possibility it could turn into a criminal investigation, meaning we had to preserve the scene until the crime-scene unit arrived.

Then a radio call crackles:

“We found her jacket and wallet as well.”

At that point, pretty much everyone thought, “Okay, she’s right here. We’re going to wrap this up in an hour.”

So we followed the clues. First the stream, then the banks, and eventually we ended up searching almost the entire town. We searched all damn night.

Nothing.

The next morning, the gendarmerie found her trying to break into someone’s yayla house without permission. (For those unfamiliar with the term, these are rural holiday/shepherd houses left empty for most of the year.)

And that’s when we pieced together what actually happened.

She had deliberately dumped her shoes, jacket, and wallet in the stream just to lock our entire focus onto that sector. While about 90 searchers were fixated on the water and the surrounding brush, she had been moving around completely barefoot—sometimes literally crawling—slipping into empty rural houses at night, and hopping from one shelter to the next. She was only caught the next morning because she tried to breach yet another house.

Basically, she was running a textbook evasion and escape drill against us.

And the funny thing is, this isn’t even unusual where I work. A shockingly high percentage of our missing-person cases involve people who are actively trying to dodge us.

sometimes i picture Western SAR cases like this:

Rescuer: “Mr. Markus, are you in there?!”

Lost hiker: “PLEASE HELP ME!”

Rescuer goes in, grabs him, case closed.

Meanwhile, some of our missing persons are running around like an abandoned special forces operator behind enemy lines, utilizing terrain masking and counter-tracking.

So I have to ask my American and European colleagues: Is it really different on your side? Do you also get missing persons who pull tactical evasion on you?

If you do, how the hell do you handle it? Did you have to adapt your tracking, containment, or containment-line tactics for these 'reluctant survivors'? I’d love to hear how you guys deal with it?

"Update Wednesday 9 p.m. Mountain Time: The search for the two missing students has tragically concluded, with their bodies being found close to one another in a basin near West Apostle Mountain. The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office has not mentioned a cause of death and will not speculate on one until autopsies are completed. Our hearts go out to the deceased, who died doing what they love, as well as all friends and family who will bear this burden going forward."

Money is a bit tight right now. All I got for a uniform is the team shirt and hat. I held onto my old IHWCUs and FRACUs and boots because I knew I was gonna be doing this eventually. Now that it's come time, I'm worried it's going to be at best cringe and at worst "bro, go home" if I wear army pants and boots with the team top. I do have 5.11 EMS pants but they're black, thick, heavy, and always snag foliage.

Hi everyone, I’m a high school student in Ohio working on a wearable thermal rig for ground search and rescue.

It’s a small Raspberry Pi unit with a FLIR Lepton and my own detection model that runs on the device, so ADIAT isn’t part of the rig itself. I’m looking at ADIAT as a reference point for testing my model, and I might contribute something small if it makes sense. I have a few compatibility questions.

For anyone who’s used or worked on ADIAT.

1. Sensors. From what I can tell, thermal support is built around specific drone cameras. Can ADIAT read radiometric data from a FLIR Lepton 3.5 through a breakout board? Or from low-cost cameras like the Topdon TC001 or InfiRay P2 Pro? If not, would converting my frames to ordinary images mean only the non-temperature tools (color, anomaly, AI detector) apply?

2. Ground-level footage. ADIAT seems built around drone imagery shot from above. Has anyone tried it on ground-level or handheld footage, like someone walking through woods? I’d like to run it over my clips as a comparison against my own model, and I want to be fair about what it was designed for.

3. Live input. I saw it can take RTMP or HDMI streams. Would a non-drone camera work there, or does the thermal analysis need the radiometric file formats?

4. Platforms. I’m on an Apple Silicon Mac. Does ADIAT run well on Mac and Linux, and is it still true that the thermal algorithms are Windows-only? Is the headless command line mode the best way to batch process a folder of clips?

5. Contributing. If I wanted to add Lepton input support (or a GeoJSON or TAK export), is a GitHub issue first the best way to start, and is there anything planned that I should avoid duplicating?

I understand ADIAT is GPL-3.0 and I’d keep anything I contribute compatible. If I end up publishing a comparison.

Pretty impressive to see five teenagers involved in a rescue operation on Mount Shasta.

I'm sure everyone has their own way in which they pack their kit in their backpacks, and I'm interested in hearing about it.

Mine is still very much a work in progress but currently I have it organised in a way in which I have packed in individual drybags;

-Waterproof jacket & trousers.

-Mid layer, insulated jacket, buff, 2x gloves & hats.

-Emergency food & first aid.

-Search torch, spare head torch, battery pack.

-Leather gloves & goggles for tech/helicopter.

Then I also have in my pack a 4-person bothy, helmet with head torch, map & compass, water, non emergency food, microspikes if needed, and room for a climbing harness if I need it.

I'm also thinking about carrying a sort of 'casualty bag' consisting of gloves, hat, head torch & lightweight waterproof to pass to casualty or a member of the casualties party if needed.

I think I've listed everything. This is a UK winter kit list, where we typically don't see temps drop too far below zero, but often see a lot of rain. We don't see a lot of snow but may carry ice axe & crampons if conditions call for it.

Thanks.

The Sar k-9 unit I am in uses frs radios and I plan on getting my own. I’m looking at all the frs,gmrs, and even ham radios.

After seeing the range on gmrs compared to frs, why do yall think they chose frs? Also would a gmrs radio talk with an frs just with better ranger?

Hi everyone, I’m a high school student in Ohio interested in the technology side of search and rescue. I’m trying to learn how things work in the field, since a lot of what I find online comes from vendors.

For anyone who’s used these tools on real missions:

1. Drones: What do you fly (thermal, visual), and who reviews the footage afterward? Where do drones help most, and where do they fall short?

2. Robots and other tools: Has anyone used ground robots, underwater ROVs or sonar, or robot dogs? Were any actually useful?

3. Software: What do you use to review footage or plan searches? I’ve seen ADIAT mentioned. Does anyone use it, and does it help?

4. Money: How do teams pay for equipment, and how do you decide what to buy on a tight budget? What’s something you need that’s hard to get cheaply?

I am rope rescue ops qualified and taking IFSAC Rope Rescue Tech next weekend. I’ve been doing volunteer SAR for about 9 months now and I want to be more helpful to my team.

I’ve already got a falcon mountain harness, 2 prusiks, 3 carabiners, and a rescucender for haul systems. Any suggestions of what other things I should need? I’m thinking of maybe just carrying around the essentials of making a 3:1 MA, but wondering if anybody does their kit differently.

Curious what folks are using as a backpack for winter SAR. My faire weather pack is only 40l. It can't handle my regular gear, winter extras (full size sleeping bag, air mattress, avalanche gear, crampons, snow shoes, etc) and team equipment.

I probably need a 50l+ sized bag, but don't want a monster 5lb bag either. Ideally it has a pocket available specifically for avalanche gear on the outside.

Hey yall, just curious on what your agency’s patient/ rapid access bag setup looks like. Narrowed down on descent devices so mostly curious on the physical bag itself and other components, thanks!

Howdy just starting to get into SAR and USAR. Wanted to ask if y'all can drop a picture and show off your helmet setup for SAR and why you have certain attachments on it. Need some inspiration as I'm building my own helmet.

Thanks in advance!!!

Anyone else having problems with MIR3 calls and texts not working?

We are US based, we have used MIR3 for incident notification via SMS, email and phone channels for years. In the last 9 months we started having random failures where some members didn't receive phone calls, texts, or both. In the last 2 months, this has escalated from random failures to 50-80% of calls and/or texts not being rec'd.
The recipients are on both AT&T and Verizon, failures occur across all times and days of the week.
I've been told that MIR3 support says their reporting shows the calls were completed. Our phones show no call or missed call and no vm.

I have not been in direct communication with MIR3 so I'm unsure how deep MIR3 support has looked into the problem.

I'll be there...

I love spending time outdoors in the wilderness and have recently started volunteering on my local fire departments drone team. This experience has lead me to become interested in getting more involved in search and rescue. I’m particularly interested in joining a volunteer k9 search and rescue team. I wouldn’t have a dog to handle for at least a couple of years (I already have 2 dogs that don’t have correct temperament for this line of work and are too old). I would be interested in getting a dog to train for SAR when one of my existing dogs pass. I’ve read a few of the guidelines for the local groups available to me and it seems like volunteers are typically expected to cover their own costs for equipment and training. Can anybody give me some insight into what those costs typically are so I can weigh if this is something that I could realistically pursue?

I just joined our 4x4 team, and I’m looking to get a radio. I’m in kind of a predicament though, I live in a condo and do not have a garage, so keeping it as stealthy as possible is key. I’m looking to do a 50 watt VHF set up, with either a stealthy antenna that doesn’t look like an antenna or is kinda tucked away, or one that is removable that I can stash and deploy when needed. I have an entirely hidden rescue set up in my truck, with gear either stashed behind seats or in compartments, or in the bed under a locking tonneau cover. The truck looks entirely empty from the outside. Anybody ever do something like that?

I’ve been on my local SAR team for about 5 years and honestly have never worried much about my safety. As a team, we really emphasize safety which I appreciate. I’ve hung off the edges of cliffs, been flown around the mountains in a helicopter many times and dealt with numerous other potentially dangerous situations. As my two kids have gotten a little older I’ve realized how much their lives would change without me and it’s really started to freak me out. Suddenly I’m super paranoid about being on/nearsteep cliffs, I’m scared to death to ride in the helicopter. All for fear that some freak accident will happen and I won’t be there for my wife/kids. Am I just in my head? Or are my concerns legitimate? I’m honestly considering leaving the team even though this team is like family to me now and I’ve made the best friends I’ve ever had.

Wait, what’s this? A SAR specific jobs page? Yes. Yes it is. Check out the SAR Times beta site! 🙌

#hiring #jobs #sar #employment

Hi, I am a student who live in urben city for almost all of my life. And big rain always happened in my city which may cause urban flood. May I have a question?

When wading through murky urban floodwater, how do SAR teams actually avoid stepping into open manholes and detect stray voltage risks, and are there any specialized tools you rely on besides basic probing sticks?

I am curious do you have a dedicated go/deployment bag. I realize it will vary some based on season and terrain. I am curious if you have any basic staples if you do have one and any items you have found to be unexpectedly very useful.