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About US
In Sonoma County the Sheriff's Department has the authority and responsibility to perform proper diligence in locating lost people by utilizing a Sheriff's Department volunteer Search and Rescue Team. This web site is dedicated to providing the community with a useful place to find out more about the Search & Rescue team's role within our county and other local response areas.
What We Do
As volunteer members of the Sonoma County Search & Rescue Team, we are on call 24 hours a day to respond to look for people lost in our local wilderness areas, surrounding urban areas, and the suburban boundary areas that back up to open rural space that is so prevalent in Sonoma County.
The first call for assistance comes in from the sworn officers on the Sonoma Sheriff's staff directly to the SAR coordinator, in our case the Deputy responsible for the SAR team.
Our current pre-plan calls for extensive investigations to be performed, an area fly-over by "Henry-1", our Bell 407 helicopter equipped with a state-of-the-art Forward Looking Infra Red [FLIR] camera. Our overhead team is paged out to assist in determination of resources needed and urgency factors which may dictate the activation of additional agency assistance.
Should search efforts escalate and resources be required, a request for our team is paged out and we respond to local staging areas capable of handling all our logistical needs. The call out could be anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours after initial investigations are underway, all depending upon factors such as the terrain and the lost person profile.
To facilitate a search effort consisting of many teams, we utilize our mobile command trailer as a base of operations. The trailer is fully self-contained and serves as a location to conduct operations — around the clock if necessary.
Some History of the Unit
Our Sonoma County Search And Rescue (SAR) Team began in Sonoma County in the late 1960's with the combined organization of the Sheriff's Mounted Posse and the Sheriff's Jeep Patrol.
Most of the activity of these two units was devoted to parades and the few missing person searches that cropped up from time to time. The interest in participating within this group performing other specialty skills generated multiple branches such as a Fixed Wing Aircraft Division, a Marine Division, a High Angle Rescue Unit, and an Explorer Post Unit. In Sonoma County as well as in most counties throughout the State, it was common that missing person reports weren't even taken for 24 hours, and lost person cases generally had a low priority.
In the 1970's, however, everything changed. Missing persons, particularly missing children, took on a new importance, and the Sheriff's Departments up and down the State responded by reorganizing their search and rescue units. In the late 70’s while under Sheriff Roger McDermott’s administration, the different search specialties were combined into one cohesive cross-trained Sonoma County Search and Rescue Team dedicated to searching for lost and missing persons.
By 1989, laws were passed that defined groups of missing persons that were identified as "at risk", and action to locate these persons was mandated within four hours of the report. Today the Search and Rescue Team is called out quickly, usually within hours of the missing persons report.
Today, the Sonoma County SAR Team is a part of the Sheriff's Office Helicopter/Search and Rescue Unit. The team is staffed by two Henry One personnel, one sergeant, who is the Team Commander, and one deputy, who is the Search and Rescue Coordinator. The rest of the team consists of about 50 volunteer civilian; unpaid SAR professionals trained in all aspects of search and rescue, including modern search techniques, land navigation, tracking, rescue, recovery, and first aid. Many members of the team are emergency medical technicians and all team members are trained to minimum level of a First-Responder. Searches are managed by a volunteer Overhead team trained in incident command systems, command post operations, and search management. The team is available for activation during community disasters and also assists the Sheriff Office in evidence searches at crime scenes.
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