I've been in Search and Rescue Training since the beginning of the semester, but this is the first time that I've decided to post about it. SAR has quickly risen to become my favorite CAS. Why? It's something totally new and it's a very hands-on CAS. For example, take today. We spent about 5 minutes total in the Wilderness Classroom before heading out to the canyon adjacent to the school for some hands-on practice
The lesson today was about transporting a litter (and a patient) over various types of terrain. We arrived at the base of Sebastian Canyon (where we practice) and began to set up our operations. In the previous two lessons, we'd learned the basics of searching, including how to actually go out and hunt for a person. In addition, we'd also learned how to "package" a patient into a litter for transport. There is actually an art to the whole idea of putting a patient in a litter. In this lesson, we learned part 2 of the whole patient transport process--actually moving the patient after he/she had been packaged.
We started out the lesson with a quick patient packaging review. Tom asked us to put three students into litters and package them up. We accomplished this pretty quickly. Packaging patients is a pretty efficient process once you have the hang of it. Once we had all the students packaged up, Tom had us let two of them out (once you are put in a litter, you are strapped in so you can't move easily at all). The final person, Julia (who my team had "packaged"), stayed in her litter because she was the patient who we were going to be moving around all day.
The process for moving a patient is not as simple as I initially thought it would be. There's definitely a method to the madness. First, it's possible to just carry the patient using straps on the litter. There are usually six people on the litter at any one time, three on each side. The remainder of the team (usually another 12 people) stand behind the litter. The first aider, or the person in charge of patient care, stands directly behind the patient's head (the patient travels feet first). There are two people in front--a litter boss and a navigator. The navigator makes sure that the path ahead is clear and that the team is going in the right direction. The litter boss is in charge of the entire team and the litter.
Our group went around like this for awhile and then we returned to base camp to fit a wheel onto the litter. A wheel is exactly what it sounds like...a massive wheel strapped onto the bottom of the litter. It allows us to focus on guiding the litter rather than lifting it. We then proceeded to practice with the litter in this configuration. It was hard work, but interesting.
After that, we were pretty much done for the day. It was a lot of fun, albeit hard. SAR is and continues to be a really fun and exciting activity.
