Mississippi Wildlife Special Response Team participating in week-long training course

The Mississippi Wildlife Special Response Team is taking part in a week long training course this week. This National Association Search and Rescue program is a national certification that is being offered through the Mississippi Department of Homeland Security.

“NASAR brings us on the same page. Being a national standard, we all know the terminology and how to work the mapping. Ya know, it helps our search procedures to be faster and more efficient.” -Chad Bryant, Task Force Leader/ NASAR Instructor

The response team is being instructed by Mississippi Task Force One on fundamental search and rescue exercises. Teams go through various scenarios, whether it be in a lake or out in the woods.

“Right now up here we’ve got OSAR missions, just overland search and rescue. A lot of this is the wooded type. But this applies to any of our disciplines, whether it be swift water or urban search and rescue. These are the same guys that’ll be working with us no matter what type of rescue mission it is, we can apply what we’ve learned from NASAR.” -Bryant

“It’s just about weekly that we have a silver alert, a missing elderly person, or a missing child. So, when these things happen, these agencies in the state, we want to be prepared. Time saves lies. So the faster that we can act and be pro-active in our training, it really helps to mitigate any of these problems, and hopefully it’ll help us to continue to be beneficial to the state.” -Dale Bell, Special Response Team Commander, Mississippi Wildlife Special Response Team