IntroductionInclement weather is a rough, harsh, or severe weather. In other areas, the weather is very stormy. People who are in such areas are sometimes severely affected by the weather, hence requiring help. A wilderness is also referred to as wild land. This is a natural environment that has not been modified in any way by human activity. It is undisturbed or intact natural environment. The areas are known to be very wild, and people have not developed any road, pipeline, or any industrial infrastructure (Zhang et al. 173). There are times when people get lost in the wild lands. The lands are very vast, and if a person gets lost in it then there will need for search and rescue operation to be carried out to help find the person. The search and rescue management is aimed at helping people who are caught up area during inclement weather and in wilderness environment among other areas. The search and rescue management also aims at ensuring that the autonomous search and rescue organizations are united in their functions. The search and rescue management is divided into four elements. The division is done according to the environment or condition of how or where an incident has taken place. The four subdivisions are:
Aeronautical – mission includes missing or downing/mission relating to overdue civil aviation aircraft, and emergency help coming from emergency distress beacon.
Inland/wilderness – this is aimed at locating missing or lost people. This division supports very many missions in each and every year.
Marine/waterborne – the missions of the division include sinking/distressed vessels, swift water rescue incidents, flooding, and boating incidents that may result in drowning.
Disaster/urban search and rescue – this looks at incidents that haves major impact on many citizens. It looks at situations that may make the victims be trapped or stranded on structures that have collapsed or fallen debris (Doke 151).
Literature review
Tornadoes and inclement weather produce many hardships when it comes to providing search and rescue services (Ezekiel 5). This is according to Ezekiel, who works with the fire department. The normal environment where people live and operate changes very fast in terms of treacherous conditions and call frequency. In an effort to tackle and standardize the operational process so as to negate the operational burden that is placed on the department and city. This is during the time of a severe inclement condition. The department has adopted swift plan to help in times of this condition. Immediately after getting forecast regarding inclement weather, especially ice or snow, the company officers shall give instruction to personnel to ensure all equipment needed required are in place. The items to be prepared are snow chains, enough medical supplies for putting reserve units in service, and reserve apparatus among others. The company officers will give a status report to shift commander when the task completed. After getting a reliable forecast of imminent inclement regarding the weather condition, the officer-in-charge organizes his/her staff properly and ensures that there are leaves given to staff. This will ensure maximum regular staffing. The officer will also make sure there is enough level of staffing per the staffing configuration with regards to a specific hazard. In most cases, there is overstaffing since this will help in fulfilling the level of the needed staff (Ezekiel 9). More staffing may be called from other areas to take part in action according to the needs of the operation. Hazard related to ice or snow is always severe, and this calls for many people who will be divided into different groups. This will help in tackling the matter effectively.
According to Berkson and colleagues, increase in maritime activities at the Arctic forces the United States Coast Guard to prepare for an expanded role. The coast guards have to operate effectively and swiftly in remote and harsh polar region (Berkson et al. 5)This region has ice hazards with communication that is very poor and there are many challenges due to lack of adequate satellite coverage. Due to all these problems, the United States Coast Guard tries to tackle this problem through exploiting technology, strengthening and increasing the level of partnership, and look for new ones with Federal and International agencies, local, state, and tribal governments, non-governmental, and academic organizations. The Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) currently gives important information for carrying out all missions with regards to maritime and snow/ice safety, stewardship, and security. There certain improvements that have made on the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), and these improvements are intended to improve the work or activities of the United States Coast Guard. Some of the improvements made are increased and improved access to coverage of synthetic radar aperture, ensuring all the gaps present in the National HF Radar Network are filled and full access to real-time observations.
Roscheck and colleague looked at cases relating wilderness environment. They established that there were many cases relating to people getting lost in wilderness environments that are remote (Roscheck and Goodrich 327). The search activity has been very hectic that this has called for the foundation of developing search and rescue methods that are successful and efficient. There are measures that have been put in place to come up with search object for improving the process of detection. The objects have been designed to provide estimates regarding calculations of detection probability. The objects calculate the probability of an object being detected in the area. The value will give information regarding the search area. However, the object does not give information regarding the areas that have been searched by a team that is responsible for the process compared to others. Ground search is normally done using GPS devices that are portable. The track logs of the GPS devices have been used to fill in the gaps regarding places that have been searched compared to those that have not. This gives the team responsible for any search ability to create detection likelihood map. The detection likelihood map will estimate probability regarding a thorough search that has been conducted in each and every area. This would allow for detection of search object if it were in the wilderness environment. The map will be very important in aiding ground searchers when they are searching an area that has been assigned to them. This will give the ground searchers real-time feedback regarding what has been seen. This map turns out to be very important for incident commanders when they are searching areas that were previously searched (Roscheck and Goodrich 329). The importance of this is that it will allow them to make good plans for future ones by giving them more information than those found on the GPS track logs.
Conclusion
Search and rescue operations are usually very tough in terms of the actual mission and the vast environment that is to be searched. This makes search and rescue management not to be easy. The teams responsible for these operations have to prepare themselves very well, and they should have adequate resources when it comes to staff and equipment to help in the search and rescue operations. Most of the search and rescue operations turn out to be successful, but there are cases when they do not achieve their goals. Their operations are always done to locate, stabilize, and extract people who are missing or caught in a bad situation.
- Berkson, Jonathan M., et al. “IOOS helps US Coast Guard prepare for expanding role in Arctic.”
Oceans, 2012. Hoboken, NJ: IEEE, 2012. Print. - Doke, Jared. Analysis of search incidents and lost person behavior in Yosemite National Park.
Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, 2012. Print. - EZEKIEL, ROBERT W., and FIRE CHIEF DATE. “OPERATIONS SNOW/ICE.” POLICY
(2012): 1(10), 5-9. Print. - Roscheck, Michael, and Michael A. Goodrich. “Detection likelihood maps for wilderness search
and rescue.” Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2012 IEEE International Conference on, (2012): 2(5), 327-332. Print. - Zhang, Zhi, et al. “Research framework for emergency rescue of disasters and crises.” Journal of
Risk Analysis and Crisis Response 2.3 (2012): 173-177. Print.
