The Squamish Emergency Program called and the volunteers answered - and some day, one of them could be saving your life.The program is training a new batch of around 60 people to work with the program.
"Some people come with skills, others have none but it's an interest," said Jim Lang, the emergency program coordinator for the District of Squamish. "We generally take six months to graduate the class."
Those who finish the class will join the 50 people already in Search and Rescue (SAR). Lang said by the end of the training course around 50 per cent of he class would be left. And after the first one to two years, there may only be 12.
"This is such a transient town for recreation," Lang said. "There's not many beyond five years. It's just the nature of the beast. That's why we have to have those recruitments."
The recruits are trained for ground search and rescue, a basic certification level.
"We know that they meet the basic standards," Lang said. "There's a wack of specialized training you can get yourself into."The course covers shoreline searches, tracking, evacuation, sweep searches, helicopter safety, rope management, survival, and avalanche orientation to name a few. And a variety of skills come in handy, especially in Sea to Sky country.
"Here locally we have a cross section of abilities because of our terrain," Lang said. He pointed out that SAR teams up north deal with primarily one kind of rescue - lost hunters in the woods. But in Squamish, there has to be a team for water, rock climbing and mountain rescue. Teams have to deal with glaciers, the Howe Sound, rivers and the Chief.
And the Squamish SAR squad is a busy one. It gets 50 calls per year, the second highest number in the province behind the North Shore Search and Rescue.
The team has seven human trackers as well. Those individuals spend the whole time on their hands and knees searching."We don't look for people, we look for clues," Lang said. "We'll look for anything."
Lang said one of the questions people ask when they start training for SAR is what skills they need.
He said SAR won't rule people out - but people can rule themselves out. But he did say if someone couldn't haul a medium-sized pack to the first peak of the Chief, they would not be successful the first component.
The main criteria for volunteers? They have to be willing to serve their community and they have to be team players and willing to learn. They should also have an interest in the outdoors and be physically fit.
The training course takes about four months with classes one night a week, but often make up classes are scheduled, making the process take longer. It also involves the occasional weekend day.
For more information call Lang at 604-815-5060.
