CMRU

Tonight I went to my second CMRU meeting (Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit).  This week there were more people in attendance and we ran through a rescue operations scenario for a hypothetical lost family near Mt. Jefferson.  I recorded the entire meeting on my camera so that I may be able to learn from it.  A lot goes into every rescue.  Amazingly the search radius of rescues, if no other information is gathered, is the distance a family can drive in their car at 65mph in the time since they were seen last.  So if a family was lost that left at 8am they could theoretically be several states away in any direction which is a huge search undertaking.  Luckily most of the time their car can be located at the trailhead indicating they are in the woods in usually a 20 to 30 mile radius... which obviously is much better.  Then command posts for the search have to be established, and human resources must be pooled together to aid in the search and rescue.  These can include local police, state troopers, Boy Scouts, CMRU, Volunteers, The Posse (horses), Air National Gaurd, etc... It really is an amazing process of organization and execution.  From watching the scenario play out in the meeting I can tell that CMRU is well trained and know what they are doing.  It's going to take a lot of training but I'm looking forward to becoming an active member myself in half a year or so.  Plus, the meeting was a lot better than going to the Computer Workshop Class.... :)

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