SARCan - S2E9 - Coordinating and Professionalizing of SAR (IASARC)

You know, I'll start off by saying that, you know, search and rescue is a system, uh, and there are lots of pieces to any system.

There are lots of components.

Uh, my experiences, uh, in the US Coast Guard and now my experiences abroad have really made me understand that out of all of the components in this vastly complex system, the one component that we must focus more on is that coordination component, right? If you consider, uh, SAR has asset components such as mountain rescue teams or boats in the maritime environment or aviation, and you have foundational components such as policy or national laws, right? And then you have infrastructure components such as communication systems.

It tends to be that the thing that fails most often, right, if you do a case study or an after action report or investigation on a case that does not go well, it's almost always the coordination component.

The ability to identify the most appropriate resource, get that resource to the scene, conduct the most effective search, that's the piece that often goes awry.

Uh, but simultaneously, uh, even though it's the one piece that, you know, we need to focus the most on, it's the one piece that nations generally don't seem to focus the most on.

You know, we seem to have this salience bias, right, as humans, right? We tend to focus most on what's directly in front of us.

You know, we like the shiny thing.

We like the shiny boat, the, the mountain rescue team, right? We, we all like those, those things that they make movies about.

You see Ashton Kutcher jumping out of a helicopter.

Uh, you don't see the talented women and men behind them in a coordination facility, uh, managing essentially the chess pieces on the board.

So ISARC was specifically created to focus on that one component, and only that one component, that we belie- believe is the most neglected globally.

Now, if you have the same conversation with persons not from the US or Canada, I mean, let's face it, in the US and Canada we're pretty blessed compared to most of the world in terms of search and rescue capacity.

Uh, the Canadian Coast Guard, exceptional.

Uh, US Coast Guard, exceptional, right? We have the resources.

We've got good training.

We've got a phenomenal culture.

That's not the case in most of the world.

Uh, many places in the world don't have trained SAR mission coordinators, so that when you're in distress in the maritime environment and you make a call, you often will make a call to someone who has almost no training.

That, that's the way it...

That's the situation in most of this oceans of the world.

So ISARC was specifically stood up to begin to close that gap.

Uh, we're a professional association, you know, much like the National Fire Protection Agency or, uh, you know, in emergency management, you have the International Association of Emergency Managers.

Uh, and we're here to professionalize.

You know, to, to Jamie's point that, you know, is SAR coordination a profession? I would say yes, but it's not wholly professionalized yet.