Search and Rescue Training

When I was given this task a month before it began I looked upon it with great anticipation, and since I was going to be away in Alabama brushing up on my truckie flying skills of IF interspersed with eating and shopping I knew our crew-man/trunk monkey, F/S Max ‘Max’ Cawley would have to do the bulk of the planning.
 
Upon returning from the peanut capital of the world it was quickly unpack, wash and re-pack, grab a map and a phone and push off for a week in the metropolis that is Dip Flat. Monday was the two hour transit, followed by the dreaded one engine landing at the camp. The weather was FAB (Fine and Beaut) and when we found out we had been upgraded from tent city to the - by comparison - five star huts with its own internal heating (a black pot belly fire) we were stoked!

Following shut-down the captain, FLTLT Carl ‘Horse’ Smith, was briefed from the Search and Rescue Exercise (SAREX) controllers about the week’s upcoming activities. This being my first national SAREX I was keen to listen in and find out the plan.

A national SAREX is held once a year and consists of members of most provincial area SAR teams, from both the Police and Department of Conservation gathering together to train and learn for two weeks.

There was a mixture of rookies and old heads from each department doing various types of instruction, ranging from a basic search team member to an overall search coordinator. The overall group size was 50-odd people. The first week, of which we weren’t part of, involved a lot of class room lectures and theory work. The second week was the group’s chance to put the theory into practice.

Following the brief we were tasked to relocate the ‘lost’ parties that were already camping out in the Dip Flat bush area. These two teams would progressively leave clues in the form of foot prints, food wrappers, food waste and so on to help educate the search teams on the kind of signs they might expect to see while searching.

It was a great afternoon to do some polling through the valleys with the teams on board and get an appreciation for the terrain we would be operating in for the next three days.

When we landed the two maintainers ACs Craig ‘Brad’ Moore and Rhys ‘Ginga’ Dibnah proved their weight in gold by carrying out the after flight maintenance while the crew de-briefed the SAREX managers on team locations and situations. Thanks for all the help and the inventive fire starting techniques chaps.

The next morning began bright and earlier in sub-zero conditions with scraping ice of the huey’s blades and a hot cooked breakfast, which became standard practice for the week. After breakfast yours truly and the trunk monkey carried out a safety brief for all SAREX personal, reminding them not kill themselves or us.

After these gentle safety prompts we carried out winch training for all search teams to give them an appreciation on how difficult it can be to get in and out of a helicopter with 60 lbs of pack and also how time-consuming it was to infill or extract a team. Three and a half hours of 60-80ft hovers later we had winched 30+ people and it wasn’t even lunch.

Following a brief from the SAREX leaders we spent the afternoon inserting all seven search teams. When we finally shutdown we thought our day was over, but we were tasked with moving one of the teams over a couple of valleys that would have taken them days to traverse.

The next day was much the same. Our helo was allocated tasks in the morning, mainly comprising of placing teams in different areas to carry out the requested search pattern, or the odd re-supply and one extraction of a sprained ankle. During these sorties we encountered some interesting signalling techniques, including the five moon montage, and the two headlight spotlight, both shortly to be added to SOPs.

Thursday saw the weather turn pear shaped, low cloud covered the hills and descended into the valleys, and it had been raining since 6am. We delayed our launch time by an hour to give the weather time to sort itself out, but it soon became obvious that this would take too long so we pressed. Visibility was low, rain was falling, low cloud was coming and going and our first team extraction was a 120ft winch in a narrow, dense, bush laden valley…perfect. Seven winches and a hot gas later we had safely dropped off one team of wet, cold cops, but we were their best friends as they thought they were going to have to walk out. We spent the next four hours bringing out the rest of the teams, who were very grateful for the sound of freedom.

When we shut down, two tired, sore pilots and one wet grumpy trunk monkey flopped out of the frame, satisfied with a good days polling.

A debrief for the whole SAREX followed, which was thankfully short…ish.
A great week was had by all, and it was a great learning curve for a junior C Cat on his first SAREX. The police and DOC workers were top-notch and extremely knowledgeable, and had some great dog stories from Rotorua….I suggest never running.

I fully recommend getting on one of these for groundies as well as aircrew, just remember always have an escape…. no matter what situation, and if you can’t hover you ain’t S#$t!, and that’s a scientific fact.