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Search and rescue (SAR) teams in U.S. national parks respond to lost hikers, injured climbers, stranded boaters, missing children, and backcountry medical emergencies. Their work ranges from relatively simple trail searches to high-angle rope rescues, swiftwater recoveries, helicopter evacuations, and multi-day backcountry operations.<\/p>\n
The National Park Service (NPS) has its own search and rescue capability. Many parks employ commissioned law enforcement rangers and specialized rescue rangers who are trained in technical rescue, emergency medicine, and incident command. Some large or high-risk parks maintain dedicated SAR teams made up of full-time staff.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the NPS frequently works with volunteer and partner organizations. Depending on the park and the incident, they may coordinate with local sheriff\u2019s offices, county SAR teams (often volunteer-based), mountain rescue groups, state agencies, the Coast Guard, or even military aviation units. In some parks, volunteers are formally integrated into SAR operations under NPS supervision.<\/p>\n
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Among the parks that partner with outside organizations is the Great Smoky Mountains, America\u2019s busiest national park. That\u2019s where the Backcountry Unit Search and Rescue (BUSAR) team<\/a>, which is headed by Andrew Herrington, operates.<\/p>\n When the members of BUSAR train, they do so through their own nonprofit organization. When a rescue mission kicks off and they respond, members are temporarily hired as emergency employees of the National Park Service. Some members don’t take the pay that\u2019s given and just volunteer their time and talent. Nobody’s getting rich from this; that’s not why these guys do it. They find the work incredibly challenging and fulfilling.<\/p>\n If you break your leg while hiking in the Smokies, chances are Andrew and his crew are helping the PSAR Rangers haul you out. They’ll do it whether it’s raining, snowing, dark, steep, or completely off-trail. And carrying an injured person on a litter through rough terrain while wearing packs loaded with medical and survival gear is brutally strenuous work.<\/p>\n To pull that off, these guys have to be fit. Not Instagram-influencer fit. Useful fit.<\/p>\n To create a team of usefully fit guys, BUSAR has developed a fitness test that screens for members who will be able to do the hard, back-breaking work of rescuing people.<\/p>\n I recently talked to Andrew about why he formed BUSAR and the fitness test he uses to assess whether potential team members will be ready for action \u2014 and for anything.<\/p>\n Andrew is a professional hunter and trapper who has worked for the National Park Service in the Smokies for over two decades. He grew up outdoors, taught his first survival class as a kid (he still teaches them<\/a>), and eventually landed in the law enforcement division of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. That’s where he got his first taste of search-and-rescue work. Whenever there was a rescue mission, park rangers would call in personnel from various park divisions. Andrew’s experience as a hog hunter in the park gave him deep knowledge of its vast, complex trail system.<\/p>\n Though, in fact, his first real experience with search and rescue was getting rescued himself after a rock climbing accident as a teenager. That accident left him with a skull fracture, partial temporary paralysis, and a metal plate in his head.<\/p>\n Twelve years ago, while working on search-and-rescue teams in the Smokies, Andrew noticed that not everyone tasked with the job was physically prepared for it. He’d sat in meetings where leaders admitted they couldn’t send certain rangers on rescues because they weren’t fit enough. <\/p>\n So about a decade back, Andrew decided to start an elite, dedicated backcountry search-and-rescue team. He wanted the most knowledgeable and physically capable people available and set out to recruit guys who had extensive outdoor, military, tracking, survival, firefighting, law enforcement, and medical experience and possessed superior levels of fitness.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n A post shared by Team BUSAR (@teambusar)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nMeet Andrew and BUSAR<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The BUSAR Fitness Test<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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