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Potomac Valley Search and Rescue Group |
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Teamwork, Excellence, Response, Professionalism, Safety |
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Potomac Valley Search and Rescue Group |
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Teamwork, Excellence, Response, Professionalism, Safety |
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New Member Information |
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Every week you will learn something new, ranging from knots, to map use, to the legal aspects of a search and rescue operation. These skills will come in handy both in everyday life, and in your work. Two or three hours a week will give you training that can't be found in any class on campus, and you don't even have to buy a book.
This is an excellent opportunity to help people in need. Everything PVRG does is aimed at ultimately improving the chance that missing people return home safely again. By being a part of the team, and helping out where you can, you can help us towards this end.
PVRG members are a diverse mix of students, UMD staff, and members of the community. People from different majors, classes and backgrounds all work together, and make friends in PVRG. You'll also get to meet people from other colleges and teams from throughout the mid-Atlantic region, through various trainings and mock searches that will be held throughout the year. In an actual search, there's an even wider assortment of people that you will work with. Law enforcement, fire departments, dog handlers, equestrian units, mountain bikers, military personel, and untrained volunteers are all brought together to find missing people.
Search and Rescue has connections to activities you'll rarely get to see anywhere else. When was the last time you worked with a helicopter? Took a class in tracking? Used a super-accurate GPS system? Slept in a shelter you made yourself? In PVRG, you will see and do things that you will remember forever.
Many people will be graduating and looking for jobs, but experience can make the difference. PVRG is a resume builder, and will improve your odds of landing a job. If you had to choose between a random student and a Field Team Leader with communications skills and experience in tough situations, who would you pick?
A search is basically a long walk in the woods. It's more beautiful than a treadmill, and the air tends to be cleaner of that of the metropolitan area. (Though we do search occasionally in urban areas.) Trainings at the rock wall, camping trips, mock searches and other excursions help to keep you in top shape.
As with any student group, PVRG needs people to step up to take responsibility for running the group, and with these positions come special opportunities. Student members can run for SGA officer positions, and anybody can serve as operations officer, communications officer, group dispatch officer, quartermaster, public information officer, fundraising officer, group training officer, or advertising officer.
Every week we have a training in a different topic. Trainings in the beginning of the semester are designed to give new members the basic skills to attend COQ weekend. After this weekend, trainings in FTM skills are offered, and a new member who makes all trainings should be FTM certified by the end of the semester. FTL training happens largely through weekend trainings, and on a schedule convenient to those who are participating in it.
Given the wide range of skills and knowledge conveyed at trainings, a variety of methods are used, including lectures, practice field excercises, videos, knot workshops, and games.
Training sessions happen every Wednesday from 6-8 in the Outdoor Recreation Center. During the course of the training, we may move to other parts of campus, so try to arrive on time. We also try to have one weekend training a month, in locations like Sugarloaf Mountain and Patapsco Valley State Park.
While PVRG can not directly accept SAR qualifications from non ASRC groups (NASAR, CAP, etc), new members with other certifications may demonstrate their skills to the Group Training Officer, who may fast track these members certifications.
As a volunteer group, you don't have to make any searches. To stay qualified as an FTM or FTL you will need a minimum number of searches per year, but if you can't make a search it's no problem. We all miss searches, and help out with the ones that we can. If you have time constraints, arrangements can be made to come back from a search early. Also, most professors accept searches as excused absences, and we are trying to get all searches approved as University-excused absences.
It is impossible to predict when people will get lost. Searches go on in any weather short of dangerous electrical storms. Searches typically last anywhere from several hours to several days, and occur on average about once a month.
PVRG operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year (366 on leap years)... if that isn't hard core, what is?
There are enough people around over the summer that the group has activites planned. As for breaks, those are some of the best times to go on trainings!
No. Nobody will ask you to do anything you want to do, and you are free to return to base if you are uncomfortable with your field team. We never send people into the field alone, and you will always have other team members looking out for your safety. You can refuse any assignment, and don't have to take orders from others.
Injuries are rare, but there is always the chance of injury in any outdoors activity. Every team has a member with medical skills, and every member has a first aid kit. Given that we are search and rescue personnel, we can take care of any injury quickly. Furthermore, when responding to searches in VA, you are covered by workmen's compensation, and all trainings and searches are covered by PVRG's insurance.