Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/337874
S SEARCH AND RESCUE 24 JUNE/JULY 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com TigerEx 2014 SIMULATED EXERCISE INTEGRATES MILITARY AND CIVILIAN AGENCIES All three quickly recover, though, and make their way to a downed aircraft to assess the fate of its six passen- gers. Minutes later, a CH-146 Griffon helicopter de- scends nearby, disembarking two more SAR techs, and in short order they have removed the injured and pre- pared them to be hoisted into a second Griffon arriving on the scene. The simulated crash was part of TIGEREX in May, an annual training exercise for 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron from 8 Wing Trenton. More than just an in- valuable training experience, the event is an opportunity to further hone the skills required for deployed opera- tions while also working closely with civilian organiza- tions. Standing near the downed aircraft – in reality a pick- up truck parked on a precarious angle – amid stretchers with role-playing passengers, LCol Jean Bernier, com- mander of 424 'Tiger' Squadron, says this side scenario to the main exercise shows the "full spectrum of what these guys are trained to do. It really was a great chal- lenge for the technicians to assess, right from the mis- sion planning phase to the launch and deciding how they were going to insert the crash site, to treating patients, preparing them for extraction, all the way to handing the patients over to civilian medical personnel." The complexity and the level of interaction with civil- ian volunteers are crucial to the effectiveness of the SAR team, he says. The main exercise involved a lost plane travelling between two lakes north of Gatineau, Quebec, and in- volved the deployment of 80 personnel, two Hercules aircraft and two Griffon helicopters, together with 10 aircraft and 70 volunteers from Sauvetage et recherche aériens du Québec (SERABEC), the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA), the Sureté du Qué- bec, the Ontario Provincial Police and local paramedics and fire rescue crews. Side scenarios included a simu- lated maritime distress on the Ottawa River and other crash scenarios in more remote locations of the Gatin- eau hills. More than learning each other's procedures, prac- tices and techniques, Captain Joel Comeault said TIGEREX is an opportunity to better integrate agen- cies like CASERA that are often tasked to conduct the initial search when an aircraft goes missing. "It can be intimidating when 80 military personnel roll in," he said, "so we are trying to add them more into our scenarios," including into the operations centre which was set up at the Gatineau airport. "That is the reality of it now with the fiscal climate," Comeault said of the vital relationship. "Ninety percent of calls are false alarms, so if you can send up a small air- craft...you are saving a lot of money." That is especially true of searches in the Arctic, for which 424 Squadron has responsibility. The landing is a difficult one. The three search and rescue technicians drop effort- less from the CC-130H Hercules as it makes its sixth pass over the crash site, guiding their parachutes clear of the tree line and ski li at the top of the south slope of Mont Cascades as they circle to a small landing area. But a gust of wind and a rocky surface quickly turn the drop into a rough collision with the ground.