Search and Rescue Mutual Aid
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Search and Rescue Mutual Aid
102: Dispatch Issues in New Mexico and Beyond with Robert Garcia
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How do different states navigate dispatch when it comes to Search and Rescue? And how will an amendment to a New Mexico law change the process and save lives?
Today we hear from Teal Harbin and Robert Garcia - who worked together to increase awareness and pass an amendment in New Mexico, which will streamline dispatch and bolster the state's SAR program.
Today's Guest:
Robert Garcia: NMSARC Chair, Field Coordinator, and Organ Mountain Technical Rescue Squad
Incident command to field team. Sending in mutual aid.
SPEAKER_05:Welcome to SAR Mutual Aid, the podcast where searching our school teams share lessons, tackle challenges, and find real solutions.
SPEAKER_03:We bring together leaders from star teams across the country to discuss solutions to universal problems.
SPEAKER_04:I'm Teal Harvest, Base Medical CEO, a wilderness paramedic, nurse, and a star volunteer in New Mexico.
SPEAKER_03:And I'm Lauren Skinachny, a wilderness EMT and star volunteer based in Portland, Oregon. Join us as we cross county lines to find new ways that you can empower and strengthen your team. Presented by Base Medical. Hey Lauren.
SPEAKER_05:Hey Teal, how's it going? Going pretty well. You know, as you know, this past January to March, I was pretty busy. And I'm finally going to give you some insight on why I was so busy during that period of time.
SPEAKER_03:And I've seen lots of photos of people in orange crowded into important-looking buildings. So I'm very excited to hear the full context.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, yes. And so what basically what we did is we were very active in this past legislative session, pushing forward an amendment to our law here in New Mexico that dictates search and rescue. And so the amendment was to streamline the dispatch of our teams across the state. And I worked very closely with Robert Garcia, the president of the New Mexico Search and Rescue Council. And he and that organization was critical in pushing this bill over the finish line. So I'm really excited to share that journey with you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think there's um it can be a little bit of a mystery that time between an injury or an illness or if someone gets lost in the outdoors and the team showing up. That whole process of dispatch, I think could use a lot of demystifying. So I am really excited to hear the story and to hear how you've addressed that in New Mexico. Yeah, let's dive in.
SPEAKER_00:In search and rescue, you're not just a volunteer, you're a professional. Your team and your community expect you to deliver. That means being ready for more than patient care. You need skills in navigation, communication, helicopter safety, and incident command. With Base Medical, you can train like a pro. Our individual subscription gives you unlimited access to over 25 search and rescue courses for just$12.50 a month. Or choose our team subscription to standardize training across your entire team. Stay sharp, stay ready. Learn more at base-medical.com.
SPEAKER_05:Hello, everyone. I'm here with my very good friend Robert Garcia, the president of the New Mexico Search and Rescue Council. We recently pushed forward a bill, this last legislative session here in New Mexico, that involves dispatch issues with search and rescue that kind of apply to nearly every team across the United States. But before we dive into that, I'm going to let Robert Garcia introduce himself in a little more detail and the council. So yeah, Robert, take it away.
SPEAKER_01:Perfect. Thank you so much, Teal. My name is Robert Garcia. I am the current president of the New Mexico Search and Rescue Council. The council is made up of 30 member teams across the state. The purpose of the council is to make a voice for search and rescue in the state. When Teal approached and said she wanted to, I wouldn't say radicalize, but she wanted to completely change. She wanted to fix things at first. I was like, I don't know if we can do that. I don't know if that's going to be possible. And then when it started getting traction, I was like, oh wow, this is going to work through her dedication and through um the senators. We were able to get that dispatch bill passed, which was just an amazing accomplishment for us. And we look forward to new things to make New Mexico search and rescue better.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and we'll definitely talk about the details of the bill and our dispatch issues and everything we're doing to try to improve New Mexico search and rescue because this it's not just me, obviously, it's you, the council. We have the Department of Public Safety, we have all the individuals in the search and rescue community, and of course, some very key legislators that are behind us, which I think has made a big difference. But before we dive into that, uh tell me, Robert, can you explain the structure of New Mexico search and rescue in a little bit more detail because it is very unique compared to other states?
SPEAKER_01:So New Mexico Search and Rescue is a is set up on a state level. It's all run by New Mexico State Police. However, it is purely volunteer. The interesting thing is the state's not the one proctoring the volunteer teams. Each volunteer team is in a resource directory once they become accredited, but each team is a nonprofit entity. So each team runs their own trainings, each team manages their own day-to-day operations, manages their equipment. However, once they sign into a mission, then they are New Mexico search and rescue. But really, when they're not signed into a mission, they are their affiliate teams.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And of course, when they're New Mexico search and rescue, they're falling under the control and the authority of state police here in New Mexico under the Department of Public Safety because of the NM SAR Act of 1978. So this is unique for New Mexico and throughout the United States in the sense that search and rescue is the law here in New Mexico. But of course, Robert, can you speak to that in particular? I mean, have um how has this law been working out for us so far?
SPEAKER_01:Well, maybe I should go back to before. So um when a mission was initiated, like for instance, let's say a hiker in Doniana County called dispatch, um, you might get the state police dispatch or you might get the local dispatch. And that's most of the case in almost every county. There is a local dispatch and there is a state dispatch. The problem is who's footing the bill, the county foots the bill for their own dispatch, the state puts the bill for their own dispatch. So depending on which dispatch you would get, you would get a different response. For instance, you call the local dispatch. Sure, they'll send out fire, EMS, but the you would usually send a sheriff's officer who might or might not be very well trained in search and rescue, who might or might not approach something the same way as search and rescue would, for instance. You might have an officer that would say, Oh, well, they've only been missing for 12 hours. They were a hiker, you know. We'll give them a couple more days, despite the fact that it's raining and hailing and just generally not good in conditions. Whereas you call the state dispatch and a state search and rescue commander would be assigned to the incident once a sergeant deemed that it was most likely a search and rescue mission. The three things that are generally needed in New Mexico, and we we love to simplify it. However, the simples are they want to be found and they need our help, a starting point that is reasonable, and safety for searchers. Now, want to be found, there's a little caveat there. Exactly. They don't fully understand that they might want help, like subjects that have dementia, autism, then that's an allowable exception. But runaways are kind of out of that. That's more law enforcement.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and we've had, of course, issues with that, and we deal with that on kind of a case-by-case basis. But just to kind of like summarize what you just said for our listeners, um, so right now in the state of New Mexico, yes, we have our statewide search and rescue system and our the law. However, when it comes to dispatching us, we have to be dispatched to the state police. And so when someone calls 911, that will often go to a different 911 dispatch center. And depending on that dispatch center, we've been running into a lot of issues, whether they either don't know how to activate us, which is just a simple phone call to the state police, or they're not aware of us at all. And the or they they have not, they the dispatcher who has maybe no knowledge of the unique wilderness areas in New Mexico, don't do not realize that the location of that individual calling for help is in an area that really does require a search and rescue team.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Teal brings up an amazing point there. So the dispatchers, when they get the call on the screen, sometimes they're given coordinates, sometimes they're given locations. Sometimes the coordinate is literally on a trail. However, the dispatch systems aren't very good. So it just shows a general map and it doesn't really show the coordinate where it actually is. So they have no idea. So when someone says, Oh, I'm hiking on this trail, well, are they at the trailhead? Are they like five miles in? Like dispatch really has no idea unless that person gives that information. Exactly. And if they say roughly halfway, well, that's also them saying it unless they're uh very well seasoned on that trail, they don't even know where they are. So that leads into the complications of dispatches that weren't trained correctly, but it's not at their fault. You know, there was no, there's no, you know, how to do everything in dispatch 101 book. Um, the states are still slowly coming up with that. For instance, New Mexico just recently got text to 911.
SPEAKER_05:I think we're the last state to have that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we won't be able to do that. And that's a federal law. Yeah, that was a big federal thing to mandate and to push through, and New Mexico finally got it. But it was like, this is 2025 here, and we just got text to SAR or sorry, text to 911. Exactly.
SPEAKER_05:Well, and and that's you know, I was really pushing for that because of our deaf and hard-of-hearing community. They really had no options when it came to notifying 911 and calling for help. Um, but but yeah, it's, you know, and then we also have the other dispatch issue, which again, not unique to uh the state of New Mexico. I've in my experience talking to a lot of the base medical search and rescue teams, they also experience this. But, you know, it's those interagency relationships and the way they view search and rescue in our teams, right? They see us as, unfortunately, some of them, not all of them, but some of the more uh paid for EMS or fire department law enforcement agencies see us volunteers as maybe not as professional or as backup. And so, of course, they try to handle the mission on their own. And then hours, sometimes days later, they realize oh, maybe, maybe we should call in search and rescue. And again, that's not everywhere. Um, the interview we did with Mason County search and rescue, they have just they've put in so much effort to build up a positive interagency relationship. Um, but it is it is difficult. And sometimes, yes, there are those issues with dispatch, which of course we were, we were and we still are experiencing, and we're trying to work on that. Um, but Robert, can you, you know, we've talked about these dispatch issues, which are not necessarily unique, right? It's either dispatch doesn't know how to correctly identify a search and rescue call, uh, they don't know how to activate us, or the other agencies are trying to facilitate the mission when we should really all be working together and just get it done much more efficiently. Uh, but what were the repercussions for New Mexico search and rescue?
SPEAKER_01:So repercussions-wise, when a search is delayed, it can greatly impact a subject. In almost every single subject category in the lost person behavior book, after 48 hours, survivability drops below 50%. So basically, a coin toss. If you want to just throw someone's life up in the air and do a coin toss on if they're gonna make it out, if you delay 48 hours, now you're looking at a coin toss, which is not great. Um, routinely, we would always joke we only had missions at 2 a.m. or 10 p.m. And that's because um the agencies would search in the daylight and then it'd get dark and they'd be like, Well, I want to go home. Well, what's it called? Search state search and rescue, they can they can deal with it over the night. So we would come in in the middle of the night and we'd be like, What are we walking into? Yeah. So that's one of the issues we've had. Um, I've been on several missions where the subject was deceased because of that delay. Yeah, which is a huge issue. Me and Teal have talked about it across the whole state. We can find almost no times where the delay of SAR, like our personal delay, like us deploying teams or how long it took us to find someone, was the actual root cause of you know why they didn't make it out. Moreover, it was either the fact that we weren't called ever, and then we go and do the recovery, or the delay of the call.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. I mean, we wrote a 25-page analysis um on this entire issue. And and so, yes, of course, we have individuals that because of these dispatch delays have either suffered or died maybe unnecessarily, right? Um, and then we also have the other issue where our statewide search and rescue system, while it's amazing that it's statewide and that provides a lot of benefits and pros, the con is that it could also collapse. And if it collapses, then statewide we are lacking search and rescue resources. And so that's kind of also where we were, right? Because our our call volume was drastically, has been drastically decreasing over the years. Yeah, Robert, can you speak to how that how that kind of led to the possible collapse of our statewide search and rescue system?
SPEAKER_01:So that's a really perfect one. Um, when I started search and rescue years ago, we would get called out routinely to go to the Gila. You know, our my team down here would have 30 to 50 callouts a year that the team itself was called for. So it would average across the state of about 300. Um I think last year that's the golden days.
SPEAKER_05:That was well, that was the golden days, which is still very, very low compared to the call volume of other states, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, 300 is crazy, but what we weren't even realizing back then, which we're kind of realizing now, it and we're only realizing it because of social media and other stuff, that we can see what's going on around us. There are much more than 300 missions in New Mexico. There are a lot of times where a dementia patient will walk off, they will get found by some good Samaritan. I we just recently had that in Las Cruces. A dementia subject walked away. And I work for an agency, so I was able to watch the cat all day. And you would not believe how many citizens called in saying, Hey, I saw this old man on this corner, it's him, and it wasn't. He was in Deming. But um, how many of those missions occur where they're resolved within you know five or thirty minutes to a couple hours? That counts as a search and rescue mission. So we really don't have a very good idea across the entire state of how many actual missions there are. What we're seeing is just the ones that the agency are actually activated, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, like to New Mexico search and rescue, which which also includes we're not seeing all of the 911 calls that should be search and rescue missions that are kicked to the other agencies and then we never know about, right? And so so yeah, I completely agree with you. We don't know the true number of how many calls we receive yearly, which of course that is probably going to change come January, and we'll talk about that. But um, but yeah, so of course, you know, we we were experiencing a drastic decrease in our call volume. We got to uh what about 120 calls per year statewide, which right around is not that much, and our teams were basically stagnant, just kind of greatly underutilized, starting some of them even disbanded. So uh the Department of Public Safety realized that if the trend continued, then our teams would disband and we'd there would probably be a huge gap in the caring for the outdoor community, right? Because we just wouldn't be there, our statewide system wouldn't be there if we don't have the volunteers that we rely on, which also included field coordinators like yourself. So, you know, so Robert Garcia, he is a field coordinator with New Mexico search and rescue. These are individuals that are specially trained in coordinating search and rescue missions. So us our teams, we're not in charge of the search and rescue mission. It is we we fall under the incident command system of the state police that are specially trained in search and rescue, which is an incredible valuable resource for for search and rescue and for the outdoor community. But again, it's all volunteer. And again, we're having some areas of the state where we we don't have field coordinators because they're just not being called out enough. So it is a big problem.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it it is becoming a big problem. I um because the because Las Cruces is kind of centrally located, I have to cover all of Doniana County, Oteto, and Lincoln County, which is just state police districts four and eight. Basically, like all of the south of the state. It practically is the furthest I can drive and still be in my district is about five to six hours. I can literally drive straight out and go away, and I'm still in my district, which is ridiculous. I can even go through Texas to get to another part of my district that's almost impossible for me to get to.
SPEAKER_05:So yeah, yeah, that's that's insane. It's not fun sometimes. Um, and and of course, the other thing that we should mention is that not only do we have this threat of our statewide system collapsing. Um, and and of course, people that are suffering or dying unnecessarily in the wilderness waiting for us, but we we have our outdoor recreation division in New Mexico, which is new, who's created in 2019, and they are really pushing forward the outdoor recreation economy here in New Mexico. I sit on their advisory board. And if we look at other states who put in a conscious effort to expand their outdoor economy, the call volume for search and rescue missions skyrocketed. There's a direct correlation between the growth of the economy and the you know amount of search and rescue missions. That makes sense, right? And so, you know, Colorado gets about 3,000 calls per year. I think Washington is around 2,000. But uh, you know, for New Mexico, if we're going to jump from 120 calls per year to even 500, that will be that's that's insane for us, but also not nearly as much as of other states. So we have to prepare for that increase in call volume as well. So, Robert, can you explain, you know, the solution, you know, what we decide to do, especially in regards to to the bill that we push forward.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. So we keep calling it a dispatch bill, but really what it was was an amendment to our current search and rescue act. It clarified several important terms, but it made it so the agencies need to notify us. However, it does not stop them from responding. Notifies timely, right? Notify timely. And that was that was a huge contention point to get those couple words in there. Um, but notify us timely. So on the dispatch side, when a call comes into dispatch that fits a criteria that is done by the state resource officer and that's currently being written. Um, once a criteria is met, then a call to state police has to be done. Once it gets over to state police, um, this dispatcher will say, like, yep, this is a search and rescue mission, um, because this agency has already said it is. They will then call a field commander directly. Um, so someone like myself, a field commander would be activated. The field commander will say, Hey, you know, yeah, this is a mission. We'll go ahead and start calling people. So it limits down the chain. Before there was a couple other chains in there that or a couple links in there that was taken out, but now it's pretty simplified to it should be the reporting party, which could be the agency or someone else, like a person like saying, Hey, my friend's not back, to a dispatcher, to a field commander.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, which manager can call teams, which is funny because you know, this necessarily isn't a new process, it's just a simplified process. But what we've done is we basically have created clear criteria of like, okay, these are the items. If if this criteria is met, then it's probably search and rescue, and you need to call state police. Yep. And then of course, you know, state police will take it from there. And that's really all the amendment is to our New Mexico Search and Rescue Act. It is incredibly simple, but again, that's the opportunity that we had uh with our statewide system. You know, not every state has a uh a statewide dispatch uh center dedicated to search and rescue, like we do with New Mexico State Police. And not every state has a statewide search and rescue system where one simple little amendment changes everything statewide, or one simple process changes everything statewide. And so that's that's the unique opportunity we had. What what was the journey like for you, that legislative session, pushing this amendment forward?
SPEAKER_01:The journey was horrible. See, I'll I'll dive, I'll diverge a little bit because me and Steinborn and a lot of people that are down here in the south have Steinborn being our one of our state senators, yeah. Definitely have the same opinion of the entire state. There is a southern New Mexico and there is a northern New Mexico, and those are two different states. Um, and it's separate because they are about three hours away from each other. Las Cruces, um, all the bigger cities down here are about two and a half to three hours from either Albuquerque or Santa Fe. So multiple occasions, Teal would call me. She'd call me almost middle of the night and be like, hey, um, it took me.
SPEAKER_05:Steinborn was calling me in the middle of the night.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's not her fault. It's I'm I'm not gonna say it's his fault. He's a state center. It's just the legislative session and the stress and yeah, everything has to be. They're trying to juggle stuff. So Teal would call me and be like, Hey, can you be here in Santa Fe tomorrow? Or, you know, in two days, can you be up here in Santa Fe? And I'd be like, Yeah, I guess. So, you know, kind of drop everything and then go drive up in the morning um and then drive back. So six, seven hour days commuting up to Santa Fe sometimes. It was it was pretty fun and hectic and meeting people and doing stuff. And sometimes you get up there and you would be like, Wow, we didn't accomplish anything today. And then sometimes you go up there and you're like, Wow, we accomplished a ton today.
SPEAKER_05:It really was. It was kind of a roller coaster of a journey. I mean, one thing that we really had to do when pushing forward this amendment, which again, pretty simple, you know, here's the criteria call state police. And yes, you can still respond if you know, if it's within your jurisdiction, we are not delaying anyone, but we really had to get the other agencies on board, right? And so that proved to be quite a challenge. Um, even the senator had to hold meetings between different agencies. I think at the end we spoke to over 700 different people with different within different agencies, from dispatch to law enforcement to fire departments to EMS. Um, I mean, it was it was a pretty incredible process. And at the end, even though there are some that were, you know, compliant, but maybe, maybe they they didn't want to be. So their agency told them they had to be. But in the end, we did get almost every agency to agree to this amendment, right? And agree that it was needed to save lives and that collaboration, wow, is something that's really, really important and would do a lot of good for our community. I think some agencies were a little shocked because they had no idea of search and rescue to even begin with, and were like, wait a minute, I don't know of the system. Yeah, some agency.
SPEAKER_01:Some agencies kind of felt like we were just walking in and we were like taking stuff from them. And it's like, no, no, no, we're gonna work on it together. You don't you don't get to just drop it in our laps anymore. And they're like, Oh, we didn't even realize we could have had you guys help.
SPEAKER_05:And so, yeah, and I do think though, that has, you know, because for a while, for a moment there, I was very worried about the bill not passing. I mean, we had that it it passed almost unanimously through both the sides, you know, the Senate and the the House. And then of course it was just sitting on the governor's desk for like for what seemed like for me for just eternity, which I don't know how long it really was, what just like two weeks, maybe a week. I think it was like a week or two. Oh gosh. Yeah, it felt like you know, a hundred years. But uh, but there was a bit of a you know, a few moments where we just didn't think it was going to pass, and all of that work and everything we put in just would be for yeah, but it did pass. But I do think even if it didn't, if the governor hadn't signed the bill, and let's say, you know, we were going to have to try this again, it didn't pass. I still think it would have been beneficial or there would have been a uh positive outcome because we were able to connect with so many agencies, right? Can you because you know there are some search and rescue teams that are either have pushed forward legislation or are planning to, like I know up in Washington, I think they're looking to push forward a funding bill this legislative session. But can you talk about how we went about educating our legislators on what search and rescue is and why they should support the bill?
SPEAKER_01:So I think so. I I'll give complete credit to Teal. Her um strategy of invading works really well. Um, it's almost like guerrilla warfare. So what you do is you wear orange, which no one in their right mind usually wears, um, and you show up days and days and days, and you go on via, you know, most most legislators now have like an online thing, so you can always tune in, and you, you know, you set your background color to orange and just blackout your video. Um, you show up, you wear orange, and eventually they notice you and they're like, Wow, people never come to stuff because there's a general lack of you know engagement at that level unless it's paid lobbyists. So they start seeing these citizens show up to things and they're like, Oh, in bright, you guys actually care about this, you know, we should care about this. That's kind of their thing in bright orange. It's it's a little harder to ignore you.
SPEAKER_05:To back up though, we did have a lot of support, right, from the community because yeah, because each team was was suffering from this, these dispatch issues in one sense or another, right? And they just didn't realize that all the other teams were also experiencing the same issue. And when we kind of brought this forward to the teams in our community, everyone's like, oh yes, we want to help. We want to, you know, tell us what we need to do. And so that that was wonderful that we had responders statewide that were pitching in to help. Um, of course, some teams felt a little uncomfortable because they're 501c3s and they're like, what would this do to jeopardize our team status? Um, and so thankfully we did have some assistance there, but generally we're all acting, not necessarily representing one team. We're just acting as, you know, concerned citizens that were in search and rescue. And so yeah, we adopted our the search and rescue bright orange, and we would meet at the cafe at the roundhouse, which is the Capitol building where all of the legislation happens in New Mexico. And uh we just treated it like any other search and rescue mission. We gave everyone assignments, we had a whole list, a map of the building, and everyone had, you know, representatives and senators that they had to go and speak to and deliver. We had a collection of really cool photos that we would drop off with information on the back, which I learned because we would print these photos and then we would print information about the bill and cut it out and copy and paste, paste it onto the back of these photos. But I learned that Robert is not good at cutting and pasting.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not good at arts and graphs.
SPEAKER_05:Basic arts and graphs, so I had to quickly reassign you from that one. But but yeah, and so you know, we basically went office to office multiple days talking about our bill. And uh, and each time there was an update, like, hey, guess what? It passed this committee, you know, are you gonna support it in the next committee? And and then we we were sure to pack the committee room.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was it was getting to the point. So the other thing that we had planned out is to make sure people from southern New Mexico were talking to their senators, their legislators, their representatives, um, and people in northern were doing the same. But we were starting to get to the point to where there was, I forget what happened that day, they had to reassign rooms, so they had everyone go down to this tiny little conference room, and they were like, There's too many of you guys, only some people can come in today because they're like, We do. But then we were even like packing the hallway. Oh, yeah, and the hallway was all spread out, and it it became very apparent to them right then that they're like, Okay, yeah, they're here.
SPEAKER_05:Um, so yeah, it was a but we had pushed forward the message so clearly that this is a no-brainer solution, this saves lives, this is bipartisan, that at one point they just put us on something called the consent calendar, where at the beginning of the committee they basically just said, All right, anyone opposed Senate Bill 353? No, no, great. People in orange, you can leave the room. So that it was extremely effective. And then of course, uh, yeah, we were called to um come to the floor uh of the, you know, on the House side uh urgently, and the entire all the entire legislative body on the on the House side, our state representatives, recognized us, search and rescue, and gave us a standing ovation. And it was it was incredible, it was amazing. Of course, it was before they voted yes, and so my thought was okay, if you if you did all of this and now you vote no, I will really, really doubt like the good in humanity.
SPEAKER_01:But pull the carpet right out from under us, be like, oh, surprise.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, but that was a pretty amazing moment as well. So of course, you know, it passed, the bill passed, it was a huge amount of effort from the search and rescue community and from our Department of Public Safety and our our legislators. You know, we had a couple of legislators uh that really pulled through for us, like Senator Pinto and Cynthia Brego, Representative Cynthia Brego. Uh, but uh, you know, now it's like, okay, what's next? All right. So can you speak to that, uh, Robert?
SPEAKER_01:So we used, we I thought years ago that this dispatch amendment was just it's it's one of those things, it's uh it's on a far hill, you'll never be able to reach it. So now that we're here, we're like, well, we're already here, you know, we already did all this work, they already know our names. Let's go for more. So we wanted to really model, and we we um we work we work occasionally a lot with Jeff Sparrowhawk for the Colorado Search and Rescue Association.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Jeff Sparrowhawk.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and they have a pretty good model where they get a certain amount of funding per year, and that's kind of on an annual basis, and that's for them to pay for equipment, pay for um people's salaries, you know, so forth. So the the goal on the Hill now is to kind of model it like that, to do a bill that would provide a fund for search and rescue every year, something separate from the state police's budget. Um, so it's not just a budget line in state police. Instead, it would be its own fund that would provide for a couple more employees for the state, where we could possibly maybe have on-call field commanders or have like an on-call pay. Um, but it would be great if we could actually, you know, reimburse those volunteers for their on-call time, or just have them have one or two paid staff that could like pick up missions, but also Especially if our call volume is going to get to what it what we think it is.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Yeah. And no, and I agree. You know, I think that's obviously what we're going to push forward now is funding. We'll see how successful we are because we have done so much work. Every single legislator, all 112 legislators know very well what search and rescue is. Um, but let's, you know, let's back it up just a little bit and talk about what's next in regards to the actual dispatch bill because it comes into effect in January of 2026. Um, we're all kind of holding our breath to see what, you know, if it will make a difference in our call volume and us being called out in a timely manner. Uh, do you feel like it's made a difference already?
SPEAKER_01:Um, I have noticed more calls. And I don't know if that's one of those biases that it's like, oh, because you're looking for it, you see it more.
SPEAKER_05:Possibly. I don't know. We've had we've had our yearly call volume in just this summer alone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing down here. Um, usually, I think last year as a commander, I ran 12. No, I ran like eight or six missions. This year, I've already run eight or six. Yeah, and we're a little bit past half. So I'm like, oh, we've had multiple weekends where literally Friday night we'll have a mission, and then Saturday night or Saturday morning we'll have a mission, and then turn it around on Monday afternoon, we'll have another mission. So we'll be like, in one weekend, we're running three missions now. So people are like, oh, and it's like every other week we'll have two to three missions a week, and we're like, oh, this is a lot more what we we're used to, and which is wonderful. It's wonderful, except our volunteers aren't used to that. We because of how many volunteers we lost, you know, we were thinking we were probably north of 2,000 volunteers, you know, in the heyday with 300, and we're probably sub-1,000 right around it.
SPEAKER_05:And just to be clear, this is this is statewide, this is not just one team. No, not all team that's 2,000 plus members, but yeah, statewide we had nearly 2,000 plus members statewide and and a few more search and rescue teams. And then now we've we're probably closer to like 1,100, right?
SPEAKER_01:Um it's right in there, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:1,100 volunteers statewide and only a handful of EMTs, which you know is part of my job as medical coordinator for the state for New Mexico, is building out our statewide medical system and trying to bring on more EMTs and providers. Um, so so yeah, we're we've we're definitely trying to make up the repercussions of the of you know that of our system um being on the verge of collapse and not being utilized. But but yeah, I mean, I think the plan is now for our New Mexico search and rescue uh resource officer. He is the one who basically coordinates he's in charge of search and rescue with the state police. He's one of our few paid individuals. Well, I guess the only paid individual in search and rescue for New Mexico. But um, I believe he will be participating the training to for to all the dispatch centers statewide on on what the criteria is for search and rescue. And so that that should be exciting too. And who knows, maybe we'll start to see a call volume, the call volume continue to increase throughout the fall and the winter, even before January.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the dispatches are gonna try to jump on it as soon as they can. Um, I know we we had done it in the bill, and you can read more about the SAR amendment to it. Um, it specifically states that everyone kind of has to have a consensus on what this criteria is. However, no one can just filibuster it and no one can just say gonna start.
SPEAKER_05:Well, it's ultimately the SAR resource officer, right? But he has to, by law, has to collaborate with the other agencies, which again, I think is very important because we are trying to push forward that one team mindset with the other agencies that we are fellow first responders alongside them out in the mountains or in the desert or whatever it may be. Um, but yeah, I think that's going to take a little while. And but I'm I'm happy that we do have to collaborate. And that's of course what Senator Steinborn really pushed forward as well. So I was thankful for that. You know, that was that was a lot. And I think there's, you know, a lot to that search and rescue teams can take from this, uh, whether, you know, they may not be pursuing the legislation, but just knowing that dispatch issues that they may be experiencing are not just totally unique to their county or to their state, that this is a statewide issue. So given not a statewide issue, a nationwide issue. So given that, Robert, do you have any advice for some of those teams that are experiencing their own dispatch issues, maybe also experiencing a decrease in call volume? They can't necessarily pursue legislation maybe as a solution, but do you think there are other things they could do to maybe help their situation?
SPEAKER_01:There definitely is. So part of the issue with less calls is it's not just less calls because less people are out there or the agencies are handling stuff. Moreover, we've had a technology jump that has enabled um coordinates to come out and other stuff to where it makes the missions half easier. For instance, when someone says, Hey, I'm on this trail and I have my legs broken. Well, it's easy now because you have their coordinates, so you know where they are. What we're now doing more of also in search and rescue, though, is um we're doing more of the dementia ones, more of the people that do walk away that we have that, you know, for lack of a better word, just kind of go unmissing because they might not have family that, you know, um advocates on their behalf. So what we've done a lot more of is dementia searches recently. Yeah. Um, and that's kind of yeah, up there. I know we have a new training mission coming late October for uh for a previous dementia subject. But yeah, that's what I feel like the best way to get more missions is to get your name out there, to go talk to your local, you know, fire, EMS, police, make sure you they know you're out there. Um, there's the project like Lifesaver, which is the tracking bracelets. You know, if your county doesn't already do it, that's a good one to get in there and kind of be like, hey, we can come help do project Lifesaber because it Takes some equipment. It takes a little bit of knowledge to know how to triangulate, but that's something that search and rescue can easily adapt to. It's MAPA Compass.
SPEAKER_05:Exactly. Well, it's it's you know, we we pushed a lot of recognition and awareness for search and rescue, right, during the legislative session. And we did that under the purpose of pushing forward the bill. But PR, making you, you know, your team known to the community, to the public, making sure they know your relevance and are aware of you and the resource that you provide to the community. That doesn't have to be just because you're pushing forward a bill, right? That's just important in general. And that could be huge when it comes to building the relationship with the other agencies, making sure that they know that you're you're there and you're relevant. I think that's one of the most critical points is like you're relevant, just like you're speaking to, like, okay, hey, we have more dementia patients. How are we going to adapt and continue to remain relevant to the community? And it also gives the team purpose when they may are maybe losing a sense of purpose because they don't have that call volume necessarily, right?
SPEAKER_01:So me and Teals just a week a week ago did a outdoor rec um outdoor economics conference that's held yearly here in New Mexico. And they shoot a big graph of how many states have like an outdoor rec department. And it wasn't many, it was mostly all the West states. Um, however, you know, reaching out, going to conferences like the outdoor rec conference, there's a big uh new um conference that New Mexico Game and Fish puts on every year in Albuquerque. Um, I try to make sure that the council is now going to start doing that yearly. It's a great way to see a lot of people because there was people coming up to us that are like, hey, I'm a hunter. I didn't even know you guys were out there. Like, oh, can we, you know, you know, how should we get a hold of you if, you know, my husband doesn't come back from hunting? Um, that kind of community engagement at a high level is very helpful.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. And we also did a at the end of that conference a week ago, we did a mock search and rescue mission where we did. Yeah, we allowed people from the public and conference attendees to step into the shoes of a search and rescue responder for for three hours, which was very stressful, three hours, I think, for us. Thanks for handling my back and forth phone calls. And we even landed a helicopter and and the conference attendees successfully facilitated each stage of a SAR mission, which was to locate, access, treat, and extricate. They located two subjects, treated them. Uh, we we performed a low angle lower, and then they via wheel and litter basket rolled them out to the landing zone and handed them over to the helicopter crew. It's pretty amazing. And I think people learned a lot and it will be helpful for us in the future. But but to wrap it up, um, Robert, do you have any other parting words?
SPEAKER_01:There's so many ways that a team can improve themselves. Um, and being the president of the council, I'm like slowly adapting the state over to new ideas and new ways to do things. Um, where we've seen some is bigger social media presence, in that also we've been using a mapping program called Cal Tapo, which is pretty well known. Um, because when citizens are like, oh, they've been out there searching, you know, what does that mean? They've been out there searching, where versus when you show them a map and show them what you've done, it shows the citizens like, hey, look, this is how much they did. You know, look, they are doing stuff. So um stuff like that. You should need to show insight into search and rescue. So it's not just this wall of you know privacy and set it's show that we're professionals, you know, volunteer, but we're still professionals. Yep, and show that we know what we're doing, do you know, videos, do fun stuff, but show the community that we are here and we've been here and we will continue to be here for the community.
SPEAKER_05:Robert, thank you so much for joining us today. You know, I'm sure I'll give you a phone call soon with some other random, crazy request. You know, um, I think that's what I'm starting to be known for. Is like, really, you think we could get that done and somehow we get it done. But uh, but yeah, but thank you so much for for being here.
SPEAKER_01:No problem, Teal. Um, it was great to be a part of the podcast for the day. Um, New Mexico Search and Rescue is doing a lot of great new stuff, mostly because of you, um, and because of the new stuff that we're working on. So it's great to be part of like the new changeover and everything. So I can't wait to see what we're on to next.
SPEAKER_05:Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01:No problem.
SPEAKER_00:This podcast is supported by Base Medical. With over 25 online courses designed for search and rescue, our SAR team subscription helps your team train smarter, stay consistent, and keep everyone on the same page. SAR skills and medical training together, all in one place. Learn more at base-medical.com.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, that was super informative. New Mexico's setup is really unique, especially compared to here in Oregon, where we're working just directly with the sheriff's office. But even with that unique setup, I can see how a lot of these issues could be pretty universal. Um, and so understanding just all of the steps that you had to go through to see that change happen was was really informative. That was a that was a good listen.
SPEAKER_05:Well, thank you. I mean, it is it was a lot, right? But again, we were in a position where we could actually get it done, uh, which was which was amazing. And and we still have to work alongside the sheriff here in each county. But yeah, it is definitely a unique setup where we're under the state police.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, and I also really like that you highlight this um kind of recurring message that we keep running into, which is the visibility of teams and the importance of outreach, the importance of building that community with agencies in your county and the general public and just pretty much everybody, so that they know the services that you offer and you know that this is a group of highly trained, highly committed, highly devoted individuals.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, you know, honestly, I think at some point we're going to have to do an episode on this. Um, d dive deeper into just building awareness for your team. And in some sense, it is marketing, right, to an extent, but uh kind of the best the best kind of marketing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You're selling safety. Realize the importance of that, uh, of that, of that PIO role. So yeah, I'd be excited to to pick the brain of some information officers and see what their tactics are so that when it comes to situations like this and it comes to initiatives like this, you're starting off uh set up to succeed.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, exactly. Great. Well, I do hope this was informative for some teams out there, whether it's a bit more insight on how you can possibly deal with your local dispatch issues or how you can advocate for your team, whether it's at a county level or state level. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Thank you so much, everyone.
SPEAKER_03:SAR Mutual Aid is produced by Lawrence Genechny and Tia Hartman and presented by Base Medical. To learn more, go to Base Dashm Medical.com.