SUNDRE — While the local search and rescue association remains receptive to new members, interested volunteers must first undergo a vetting and training process, said the group’s senior search manager.
Roger Tetreault, who assisted with the planning and logistics on the operation to find a Calgary man who went missing on his Bergen-area property, said additional hands are always welcome.
Harvey Pyra, 73, was found deceased on Wednesday, March 31 after a roughly two-day search. When Pyra was reported missing and the search effort was launched, word quickly spread in large part through social media, with several people who were keen to contribute to the operation by rounding up a group that could get mounted on horseback to help cover more ground.
A search that receives a lot of publicity does tend to spark a sudden interest from people who want to get involved, said Tetreault.
“We never want to exclude anyone from coming out. (But) we have a process of vetting new members . . . to give our teams credit, we are volunteer professionals that are very well trained, qualified and insured,” he said.
“I would relate this to, how many people would want to volunteer to go into a burning building because they think the firemen need help?”
So, while Tetreault said SAR members “absolutely understand where they’re coming from,” there are procedures in place that must be followed in the interest of everyone’s safety.
He also empathized with people who are experienced equine outdoorsmen.
“They believe they have a skill set that’s invaluable to jump in and help,” he said. “What they don’t understand, is that there is a process and there’s some safety issues.”
For example, during the search for Pyra, fresh grizzly bear tracks were discovered in the area. Of course seasoned outdoorsmen will shrug that off as they’ll claim to know their way around bear country. But there are too many risks, he said.
“As far as we were concerned, we had it covered with the amount of volunteers we had. There definitely is a place for what we call spontaneous volunteers. But it wasn’t (the case) in this situation,” he said.
“To just bring in everybody that wants to help out, that’s a huge liability for the RCMP. Ultimately, they’re responsible for the missing person search.”
A Bergen community association did, however, help out by making the area’s residents aware of the situation, requesting that people stay away from the property, while also asking they keep their eyes peeled for a wandering male who might have appeared out of place, he said.
Offering some historical context, Tetreault said, “Sundre has had one of the first — and one of the biggest and best trained — mounted SAR teams in the province. (However,) people come and go and that part of the team has fizzled away recently. But we do have members that have horses, and in the right situations, we’ll bring them in.
“Horses are awesome — I mean, there’s rough terrain out there. Why not ride a horse rather than walk through it? A horse can cover a lot of ground, you’re up high, you can see down from above, so you do have a better vantage point."
He added that the animals are also quite alert to their surroundings and might even pick up on or hear something before the rider does.
“We understand that," he said.
In this specific situation, horses were not deemed a priority for the operation, he said.
“What you could have done with a horse and rider, we cleared with a helicopter in less than an hour. They cover so much area looking directly down.”
Even if substantial snowdrifts hadn’t hampered visibility on the ground, due to the topography of the land that features dips and rises, he said a rider wouldn’t necessarily be able to “see in every nook and cranny from the ground.”
Patrolling on foot or horseback includes looking for evidence such as footprints, candy wrappers and cigarette butts that won’t be visible from the air, he said.
“In this type of search, for the amount of time we’d been looking for this fellow, it’s probably not a secret that we knew that it wasn’t going to end well,” he said, adding at that point, teams start searching for a “large object” that would be more easily spotted from eyes in the sky.
Accepting that social media platforms are part of the future, Tetreault said nothing posted was overly negative, despite some criticism levelled against SAR and the RCMP.
Asked what message he had for critics, he without hesitation said, “Suck it up and join. You think you can do better? Come and join us — we’re always looking for volunteers, the door is open.”
“It’s not for everybody” and not everyone who expresses interest will succeed or remain involved, he added.
“We don’t typically get a lot of long-term members that come out of this kind of publicity,” he said. “But, by all means. If there’s people that are interested, we don’t want to turn them away.”
After an initial interest, some people get bored over time, he said.
“This is our first call out in almost two years in the Sundre area. We’ve gone to assist other teams,” he said.
But considering how “crazy it’s been out west for the past year, Sundre itself hasn’t had a whole lot of call outs.”
Yet there are a few core 25-year members who remain committed, he said.
“It does become a kind of lifelong family," he said.
As with everyone else, COVID-19 has thrown a wrench in SAR’s gears. But the group continues to try meeting monthly, which involves not only addressing regular business matters but also conducting training exercises.
Members are generally outdoor enthusiasts, and will tend to use hiking or camping trips as opportunities to further practise skills such as map-and-compass navigation in the backcountry, he said.
“The level of training for SAR volunteers is very high," he said.
Additionally, volunteers invest their time helping out in community, he said, citing examples like lending a hand for the Sundre Municipal Library’s outdoor Halloween event at Snake Hill last year.
And although they were unable to last year due to the pandemic, members had for the 10 past years worked alongside 4-H for the Christmastime food drive.
Anyone interested in learning more is encouraged to visit the group’s website, www.sundresar.com, or send an email to [email protected]. Although the group has a page on Facebook, that presence is more about sharing information than providing a line of communication.
“We’re not going to respond to it, it’s not that kind of a platform,” he said.
Alternatively, he said the Sundre RCMP detachment, which can be reached by calling (403) 638-3675, is able to put interested individuals in contact with SAR.
