SAR Response

Mayday! M'aidez!

• Victims themselves call out for help - by phone, radio, mirror, smoke, flares, spelling out words with large stones on the ground, etc.
• Someone else notifies the SAR system - a witness, for example, or a family member or friend, when someone is overdue.
• An electronic emergency beacon is triggered. Emergency beacons are most commonly associated with ships and aircraft, but there are now personal locator beacons available for wilderness adventurers, hunters, foresters, park rangers and the like.

Once it is determined that an incident is genuine - not a false alarm - then trained SAR forces, paid and/or volunteer, set to work. The type of incident - air, marine or ground - and the jurisdiction, determines who does what and when.

For instance -

• If a group of hunters doesn't return home for supper on Sunday evening, as planned, family members will probably phone the police. The police may enlist the help of SAR volunteers and tracking dogs. Ground searchers will be called to gather in one place, usually close to the 'place last seen' (PLS). From there the search will proceed along well-established lines determined by the latest training methods and years of experience. Determining where and how far away from the PLS to look is both an art and a science that makes use of contour maps, analysis of previous searches and probability theory.
• If a ship founders off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the Canadian Coast Guard will come to the rescue, but Canadian Forces aircraft, ships of opportunity and the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary
  could also get involved.
• If an aircraft goes down in the forested mountains of British Columbia, then the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre (JRCC*) will task the Canadian Forces and CASARA to find it.

*Three JRCCs (Victoria, Halifax and Trenton, Ontario) co-ordinate marine and aeronautical SAR response across Canada, in the oceans around Canada and on the Great Lakes. They also co-ordinate requests for assistance from other levels of government.

JRCCs are staffed by Canadian Forces and Canadian Coast Guard personnel, who respond to tens of thousands of radio and telephone calls, resulting in nearly 8 000 SAR cases annually - about 80 per cent of these are maritime related.

Two Marine Rescue Sub-Centres, operated by the Canadian Coast Guard, and located in Quebec City and St. John's, Newfoundland, co-ordinate marine responses in specific areas.

NEXT: Canada - a SAR Leader