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Featured SAR Volunteer Association:
CASARA NWT

By David Taylor, CASARA Northwest Territories

The Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA) Northwest Territories (NWT) unit was formed around1989, and is a member of the national CASARA organization. The national CASARA organization was created to channel the efforts of aviators in the general aviation community who wanted to help with search and rescue (SAR) when aircraft went missing. Many of the policies and expectations of the organization are aligned with those parameters in mind.

In the NWT, we currently have about 130 members with zones in Fort Smith, Hay River, Yellowknife, Norman Wells and Inuvik. Yellowknife is the largest community but it is still representative of the difficult environment for a national SAR organization in the north. There is a very small general aviation community and our CASARA membership is predominantly made up of mobile working age people. For instance, almost 50 percent of the 35 Yellowknife members consist of people who have been with the organization for less than two years, and two thirds of the membership is under the age of 50. We have only one volunteer pilot with an aircraft; therefore, maintaining a trained group with the ability to respond is challenging.

Exercises

In Yellowknife, most of our exercises consist of four or five people doing one or two flights on an evening or weekend. This is typical of the other NWT CASARA zone exercises and is representative of an initial call for a search aircraft.

A crew prepares the aircraft for a search flight. Photo Credit: Janet Pound

On the weekend of August 15 and 16, 2009, Yellowknife hosted the CASARA Western Canada Search and Rescue Exercise (WC SAREX). This is an annual exercise that includes participants from the territories and western provinces. The WC SAREX consisted of 13 CASARA aircraft and about 100 people for a one-day exercise. Ninety of those people were from outside of Yellowknife. It was just the second time that Yellowknife was hosting this exercise.

The WC SAREX was conducted to represent how things would work during a major search. A major search occurs when the missing person is not located within a day or so and resources are gathered from other areas to assist. With so many people and aircraft involved over such a short time, the requirement for coordinating the SAR crews is much more challenging than it is with just one crew and one aircraft. To provide maximum exposure to this challenge, the search headquarters staff was rotated throughout the day allowing about 25 people to experience one or more of the six different headquarter roles.

Despite the challenging environment, CASARA NWT is rarely called on to look for missing aircraft. By far, most of our search requests come from the RCMP for help with missing boaters or snowmobilers. For this exercise, we invited our SAR colleagues, including the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary (CCGA), Yellowknife Search and Rescue and the RCMP, to participate as targets. A few additional targets were provided by friends and fellow aviators.

In an actual search, there is one target description and everyone flies an area to provide coverage over the probable location of the missing person. For the WC SAREX, we had nine unrelated searches scattered in all directions around Yellowknife. The targets included boaters, paddlers, campers, aircraft and aviation Emergency Locator Transmitters. Although arranging targets like this complicates the planning process, it provides a live target in most of the search areas and a realistic example of the typical multi-agency search environment in which we operate. It is also very well received by the search crews.

The challenge of communication

Communications between agencies is often a challenge. In order to address this issue, CASARA carries radios commonly used by the other agencies. In Yellowknife, we have a Kenwood radio used by the ground SAR teams and the RCMP. We carry a marine radio to allow us to talk to the CCGA and boats on Great Slave Lake. We also carry cell and satellite telephones to communicate with search coordinators. Each of these devices can be connected to our aviation headsets, which eliminates the noise interference from the aircraft. The Coast Guard and CCGA vessels also carry aviation VHF radios to permit communication with CASARA and military search aircraft.

This arrangement provides maximum flexibility for communications among agencies. For this exercise, each target indicated which radio it had and the aircrew was briefed to attempt to communicate with the target after locating it. This simulated a requirement to communicate with a collaborating agency when a target is located.

Search HQ program

CASARA has access to the computer program “Search HQ”, which was developed by a CASARA member. This program can be used to plot search missions in OziExplorer, which is a low cost off-the-shelf program for viewing maps and programming a Global Positioning System (GPS). With this software combination, it is possible to generate a search pattern, program a GPS and print a map with the search pattern printed on it. Although this technology has been around from quite some time, not all CASARA zones use it.

During WC SAREX, crews were in the hangar preparing for flights on the Saturday morning. Photo Credit: Fred van Driel

During WC SAREX, all the search missions were prepared using OziExplorer and Search HQ, and they were available for downloading to a GPS. At the start of the day, all GPS were programmed with all the search patterns. In addition to permitting much more accurate pattern flying, this also provides a number of flight safety benefits. As the route is visible on the GPS, the navigator can easily and quickly detect when a navigation error is taking him or her off track. The search areas were all close to Yellowknife resulting in a number of pinch points where aircraft would be transiting between nearby search areas. To help reduce potential conflicts among transiting and search aircraft, the transit legs were included on the GPS search pattern. Several navigators indicated that this was their first opportunity to fly with a pre-programmed GPS. Since all the GPS were preloaded at the start of the day with all patterns, no extra time was required prior to each flight to program a particular search area. In the event of an actual search, it would also be very easy to assign a crew to a new search area.

By all accounts, WC SAREX was a success. There were 11 participants from the NWT outside of Yellowknife, and five each from Nunavut and the Yukon, with the remainder coming from the four western provinces. The exercise was planned to be a one-day event, but with the arrival of several crews on Thursday night, two flights were flown Friday afternoon. On Saturday, there were 31 more flights for a total of 54 hours of flying. There was ample opportunity for anyone to work a search headquarters position and to participate on a flight. On Sunday, there was also an opportunity for 12 people to do spotter training in the 435 Transport and Research Squadron C130 Hercules that arrived Saturday afternoon.

WC SAREX provided the northern crews with a good example of the complexity of working on a major search. All crews were exposed to techniques and tools used by CASARA members from other western provinces. Everyone had plenty of opportunity to learn something new. From the comments submitted after the exercise, the consensus seems to be that the Yellowknife team did a fantastic job of organizing the event and provided an excellent training opportunity in a safe and enjoyable environment. The event was covered by local French and English radio and print media, as well as English television.

David Taylor has been a CASARA member since 1991 and the Yellowknife Zone Commander and NWT Training Officer since 2000. He has participated in SAR exercises, as well as planning and strategy meetings across the north and he received a Certificate of Achievement from the National Search and Rescue Secretariat in 2001.

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