Wide Area Search

Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend a Wide Area Search class, offered by the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX). It was packed with information and exercises and I was thoroughly impressed with every aspect of the course. I learned an incredible amount of information and left with an increased level of confidence in my abilities, in an urban environment and beyond.

When I first heard of the Wide Area Search class, I thought that the "wide area" was more a matter of mixed geography (urban, rural and wilderness). While these different environments are considered, the "wide area" is more in terms of skill sets. And the purpose of the Wide Area Search course is to fill the skills gap between wilderness and urban SAR, so as to have a more affective team (management and searchers) following a large-scale event that could have you dealing with an urban environment that may as well be wilderness, because of the level of destruction.

To give you a better idea of where the folks were coming from when developing the course, the whole Wide Area Search concept was in reaction to lessons learned after Katrina.