If there’s trouble, SAR team flies out
CFB Trenton’s search and rescue squadron covers most of central Canada
TRENTON Canadian Forces Base Trenton’s search and rescue team (SAR) responds to about 4,000 calls a year over an area of 10 million square kilometres.
It’s the largest search and rescue region in Canada, said Capt. Sheila Tham, 8 Wing Trenton’s public affairs officer. It includes the Great Lakes and extends from Trenton to Quebec City in the east, the B.C. border in the west and to the North Pole, and includes Hudson’s Bay and the Arctic Ocean.
“Historically, the involvement of Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre has saved on average more than 1,200 lives and provided assistance to over 20,000 persons each year within the Trenton SRR,” Tham said.
The 8 Wing 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron at CFB Trenton held a public affairs event Thursday, for the first time since September 2020, to showcase its work for reporters.
SAR incidents fall under aeronautical, maritime, or humanitarian and civil aid classifications, said Maj. Marc Crivicich, the commanding officer at the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre at Trenton.
“The numbers change yearly, but I would say approximately threequarters of that is going to be marine cases, especially in the Great Lakes,” he said.
SAR works with first responders, such as the Ontario Provincial Police, to maximize efforts and provide assistance in more challenging situations, he said.
“Often, we’ll see a request because the patient is isolated in a position that can be hard to extract them from, or involves moving them over very difficult terrain,” Crivicich said. “Even three or four kilometres can take a very long period of time, where we’re much faster and able to get them to hospital care in a more rapid period.”
An example of this would be an individual in a heavy forest area, explained Crivicich, where a hoistcapable helicopter is required.
Historically, the involvement of Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre has saved on average more than 1,200 lives and provided assistance to over 20,000 persons each year within the Trenton SRR. SHEILA THAM 8 WING TRENTON’S PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER
For these cases, a CH-146 Griffon helicopter is deployed, he said.
For aeronautical search and rescue missions where a helicopter would be too slow, SAR uses the CC-130H Hercules tactical transport aircraft, which has a range of 7,200 kilometres and can transport about 80 passengers.
“Each unit has different aircraft based on the geographical case requirements,” said Dan Verret, a search and rescue technician at Trenton.
“Winnipeg has only the fixedwing, because most of their missions are hours away into the Arctic, so a helicopter would take forever to get there.”
The team at 8 Wing demonstrated various aeronautical drills they use to practise on a regular basis. This included parachuting from 3,000 feet (914 metres), hoisting patients from 80 feet (24 metres) and deploying message drops and tactical supplies at 150 feet (46 metres), said Lt.-Col. Jean-Paul Landry, commanding officer of 424 Squadron.
Jumpers have life vests to allow them to parachute into water and are trained to safely land during the night or in bad weather, he said. “The most challenging thing that we deal with in search and rescue is weather. People usually get into distress when the weather situation starts to degrade very rapidly,” Landry said.
“We need to go into that weather potentially to help them, so the riskiest missions have been those involving difficult or challenging weather conditions.”
There are multiple steps to becoming a SAR technician, including training at the Canadian Forces School of Search and Rescue, scoring high on the Canadian Forces aptitude test, and practical training related to the specific field an applicant is moving toward.
“You have to pass all those, and then your chain of command has to approve you to go to selection,” said Sgt. Robert Featherstone, a search and rescue technician at Trenton.
But an applicant also needs to have empathy and a true desire to help people despite the danger, explained Featherstone, as both the training and real-life scenarios carry serious risks.