Free Press/Andrew Ottoson
Grangeville Mountain Rescue Unit raises ARES volunteer Ethan Justeson over a steep incline at the conclusion of the main exercise Sunday, May 22, at McComas Meadows, proving Idaho County has the ability to deploy a unit versed in high angle technical rescue alongside other specialists when disaster strikes. From left are GMRU’s Lee Spencer, Ryan Robinson, Jeff Scott, ARES’s Justeson, John Finley, Rick Stephens and Roy Kinner.
Andrew Ottoson - sports/outdoors reporter
May 24, 2011
From across Idaho County, emergency responders brought their diverse skills together for a full-scale exercise at McComas Meadows over the weekend.
"We had approximately 83 planning to attend," Grangeville Mountain Rescue Unit's Brian Adams said. "Some couldn't make it for various reasons."
With support from Clearwater County Search & Rescue, around 70 participants simulated two search and rescue operations. Participants included radio specialists and a dog team from Clearwater County members of these organizations: GMRU, Idaho County Sheriff's Office, Idaho County Disaster Management, Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security, Camas Prairie Amateur Radio Club (CPARC), ARES, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Boy Scout Troop 555 and Idaho County Sheriff's Posse.
Adams said three months of planning went into the exercise, and hopes practicing better coordination between officials and volunteers will produce better results when lives are on the line.
"This exercise started out to be a GMRU training exercise but the Idaho County SAR coordinator asked if we would open it up to the whole county, which we did," he noted. "I probably have a few hundred hours spent planning to get this done. I took five trips up to McComas Meadows prior to the event to lay it all out, get GPS coordinates, make sure we would have access to the areas we wanted to use and that the exercise wouldn't damage the area in any way."
Adams said the exercise tested the county's ability to bring a variety of emergency response organizations together under a single command system. It also tested the effectiveness of tracker teams, search dog teams and technical rescue teams.
Riggins-based Idaho County Sheriff's Deputy Justin Scuka was incident commander. Melissa Walters ran dispatch.
"Justin did an excellent job with the many curve balls that were thrown at him," Adams said. "I wanted to make the exercise as realistic as possible so we simulated a number of problems that might occur during an actual event. There were a number of 'injects' that we could initiate if the search was happening too fast or too slow which allowed us to control play as needed."
"I had several searchers comment to me about how well Justin and Melissa managed both the search and communications," he added. Adams also highlighted Sheena Scuka's contribution to incident command, managing check-ins and checkouts.
The exercise was originally designed to include a horseback search, but that portion was kiboshed by concern over the recent horse herpes outbreak.
"We performed the horse portion of the exercise on foot which worked quite well," Adams said.
The Saturday, May 21, exercise simulated searching for a missing group of Boy Scouts. The next day, the groups simulated locating a plane crash site and rescuing survivors.
