In the search for vulnerable missing people, the professionalism of volunteers matters

In the ecosystem of the emergency services, police, fire and ambulance are publicly funded and have clear legislative remits that bind them to their mission and to their communities. Alongside them, quietly and steadfast in their own mission, are the voluntary groups who rely on people so committed to the safety of their local people that they give up their time to be on-call to respond quickly and professionally to those who may be in their darkest hour.

And that’s what brings me to Hampshire on a wet Friday morning, to meet Hampshire Search and Rescue (HANTSAR), a lowland rescue team devoted to the people of this southern county of England.

Trevor Vidler is the group’s vice chair and search manager, he picks me up from Winchester and drives me to the HQ of HANTSAR, nestled deep in the countryside, so rural in fact that their base is some rather modern metal ‘barns’ let to them by a farmer, diversifying to stay afloat by making the most of his land.

Like many of HANTSAR’s 150+ strong volunteers, Trevor is retired and after a long career in the military where he found himself first stationed in Yemen in the 1980s, he’s giving back to the county where he was born. HANTSAR is a charity and needs around £80k per year to cover its costs. The HQ building is impressive, bringing together the previously dispersed assets of the team into one place, there are vehicles, trailers, a boat and racks of equipment all clearly marked and organised. This is a group that knows that everything has its place when time is critical.

The mainstay of HANTSAR is locating vulnerable missing people. They have an MOU with Hampshire Police and I learn a new word – Polsar – the police officer in charge of search and rescue and the important operational liaison with HANTSAR.

While it was fun being wrapped up in an Aiguille Alpine Equipment casualty bag to see how they heat people who are hypothermic after being outdoors too long. The serious business of locating missing people takes place in a converted Fiat Ducato decked out with six flat screen monitors and other communications equipment akin to something you might see on a TV cop drama.

I’m shown how HANTSAR is using mapping tools to create search areas and employ some clever thinking about behaviours of people. Not all missing people are equal – an elderly man with dementia behaves quite differently to a temperamental teen for example. The precision of the process to allocate volunteers to each role in the search is clear from other screens showing who is where and when, what their role is and, critically, every action is logged. We talk about the importance of evidence and recording decision making, useful for incident management especially if it is prolonged and there are changes in personnel.

Logging everything also leaves the vital record for the debrief: the hot debrief immediately post incident and longer term debriefing as part of evidence to inform training and development, learning what works and what doesn’t, both are integral to the continual cycle of improvement.

Training and development along with competence come up in every conversation I have during my time with the team. Ben is the training lead and he explains that to become a Search Technician, a volunteer will need to go through 100 hours of training that can take over six months to complete, with a blend of on-site training, online and simulation allowing it to fit with volunteers’ work and home lives. The Search Technician Licence is mandatory for deployment and after that volunteers can specialise or take on more responsibility as team leaders.

Sophy is a civil servant based in the county and joined the team a few years ago. She is the water rescue lead and shows me the Zodiac Milpro boat that is big enough for six people, and a more agile inflatable rescue board from Red Equipment that is nimble enough to move around low level water areas.

I recognise the gear on display from photos of recent floods where responders wade through surface water that has overwhelmed towns and villages. We talk about the design of dry suits. With a fit that assumes a man is wearing it rather than a woman, it is a reminder that this world is very male and Sophy is still in a minority. She tells me with great pride about taking part recently in a programme called Breaking Boundaries which aims to increase female representation in technical rescue roles and build visible role models for future generations.

On that technical rescue point, I’m shown the rope rescue capability and while I raised an eyebrow about its use for lowland rescue, it’s soon clear why they need it. The team tell me about a recent training exercise with the Red Devils, the British Army’s parachute display team, and how they simulated a parachutist stuck in a tree. The HANTSAR rope lead brings technical rope rescue knowledge from his day job in industry and shows through the demo rig how the system of ropes and pulleys can move people from distressing situations to safer ground.

Finding people over vast swathes of the rural landscape as well as urban environments is a challenge and, like many parts of the emergency services, HANTSAR has invested in drones to provide eyes in the sky. The team has three different sized drones with the latest investment having much improved thermal imaging capabilities pinpointing heat sources far in the distance.

Nearer to the ground, the team has just started using thermal monoculars, hand held devices capable of detecting heat sources a lower levels. I’m delighted to learn that the team discovered the Hikmicro kit at The Emergency Services Show and after trialling one, committed to buying a batch of them for use by the teams.

HANTSAR spends a lot of time fundraising to ensure it can provide the search and rescue service to the people of Hampshire. Would it make a difference if the status of volunteer, community and faith (VCF) groups changed so that they were embraced by the civil contingencies legislation that applies to police, fire and ambulance among others?

The government recently responded to a consultation on strengthening partnership working with the Cat 1 responders which could lead to changes in the status of organisations like HANTSAR. It concluded that there are: “significant differences in existing experiences and perceived resource capacity challenges to implement a strengthened statutory duty.”

Over 100 VCF organisations responded to the consultation and the government says it will do more analysis on the data from the consultation, so changes may yet take place and would form part of a proposed post-implementation review of the Civil Contingencies Act in 2027. I’m sure that volunteer organisations like HANTSAR will be watching this with great interest.

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