Search and Rescue volunteers are seen during a training session. Search and Rescue Saskatchewan Association of Volunteers (SARSAV) plans to start a Battlefords chapter. (Submitted photo/Saskatoon Search and Rescue)

By Angela Brown

Volunteers needed

Search and rescue plan to start local group, looking for volunteers

Oct 31, 2019 | 2:18 PM

A provincial search and rescue volunteer organization is planning to start a new chapter in the Battlefords.

The Search and Rescue Saskatchewan Association of Volunteers (SARSAV) will have an information night at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 14 in North Battleford at the Wildlife Federation offices.

Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer or looking for more information is invited to attend the event. SARSAV and the RCMP representatives will be present.

“There is no commitment,” Nathan Bartholomew, one of the SARSAV directors said, adding people who attend will be able to learn more about how they can be involved as an active searcher or to help with fundraising, administration or other duties.

While there already are search and rescue volunteers who work in the Battlefords, they have to come in from chapters in Saskatoon and Meadow Lake.

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Bartholomew said the best option would be to have a local chapter so when the RCMP call for assistance in looking for missing people local resources can be on the door of the detachment within minutes.

“It just speeds up the response time, and it gives locals the opportunity to be able to be involved in local search and rescue efforts,” Bartholomew said.

There are currently 16 SAR Chapters of SARSAV operating in the province.

Bartholomew said it would be ideal to have about 20 to 25 active searchers in the Battlefords. SARSAV would provide all volunteers with training.

Last February in the Battlefords, an elderly man was reported missing in near – 30 C temperatures. SARSAV teams from Saskatoon and Meadow Lake were called in as well as Saskatoon Police Services. Fortunately, the individual was found close to midnight, appearing slightly hypothermic and frostbitten.

“He probably would not have survived the night if he had not been found,” Bartholomew said, adding that this is an example recently here in this community of an individual being found and another life saved by the combined efforts of search and rescue volunteers and the police.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow