Using Your Android Phone as a SAR Pager

Updated on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 12:34 by Jeff Lehman

One of the great things about pagers is their optimization for doing a single thing. They sit there silent until they are called upon to roust us out of whatever we are doing. Contrast this with your smartphone. A device that is used to check email, make phone calls, surf the web, and play games. It is the antithesis of your trusty pager. With all of its fancy features, most smartphones are not well-adapted to making sure that they make enough noise to wake up up in the middle of the night, or alert you if you happen to miss the anemic tone they emit. To press them into pager duty, we will have to download additional help. A non-smart (dumb?) phone can also receive the messages mentioned here, but applications cannot be installed on these sorts of phones.

First, the ideas presented here require that your team use some sort of text message callout system. Such a system sends everybody a text message with a common text string. [By the way, ALL county teams have access to this functionality. It has been used in the county for 10 years, and you can read about it here.  Contact Jeff Lehman for info]. For example, on my team all callout messages have the string, "[Callout]" in the subject. This is automatically placed there by the mail list that is used to distribute the messages. Having this string enables you to set up your phone so that only messages with "[Callout]" in them make your phone ring at all hours of the night. This keeps you from being shaken awake by an SMS (text) spam message in the middle of the night.

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All-Posse Mounted Training

The MSAR committee is proud to announce an All Posse Mounted Training, held on Oct 22, 2011 at the Mojave Forks Regional Park, off Hwy 173 in the Cajon Pass area.  This event is presented by the Apple Valley Mounted Posse and will cover all types of mounted SAR techniques including a helicopter extraction of a victim following a search scenario and a presentation of the uses of pack animals in SAR. Sign in starts at 0700.  The exercise will start at 0800 so please be early and ready to go.  We will refresh some old ideas and present many new techniques that may be very helpful for future successes. Lunch will be provided by the Apple Valley Posse.  To help defray the cost for food, Apple Valley Posse has already received $100 donation from each participating Posse. There is no fee for the individual participant.  Please support this valuable training with your participation.  Many hours of preplanning have been spent to guarantee an educational and fun exercise. We need a head count ASAP so please send your participant roster to; Commander Roy Nuckols, Apple Valley Posse, 17087 State Highway 173, Hesperia, Ca.  92345. rnuckols@sbsar.org

Rescue on San G

WOW!!!!! This hike had all the makings of a made for TV movie. We had action, adventure, drama and even a reunion scene that would have made a grown man cry. You name it and it was there.

View Fish Creek and San G in a larger map
The hike started out innocently enough; we met at the Mill Creek Ranger Station at 5:30 a.m so we could get an early start to the trailhead for Fish Creek. We left the ranger station at 5:42 a.m and after a brief stop at the restrooms at the South Fork Trailhead on Jenks Lake Rd we arrived at the Fish Creek trailhead at 7:00 a.m. The drawback to getting an early start is the restrooms at the ranger station aren’t open and there aren’t any restrooms at the trailhead, something to keep in mind if anyone who reads this needs it for future reference. To get to the trailhead you take highway 38 from the ranger station approximately 24 miles to the turnoff for Heart Bar Campground which is on road 1N02. Once you get past the campground it requires a 7 mile drive on dirt road 1N05 to get to the trailhead. There were quite a few cars in the parking area when we got there so apparently a lot of other folks had the same idea. It was a beautiful day and not a cloud in the sky. The sun was shining brightly and it was a cool 60 degrees. We hit the trail at 7:15 a.m. The elevation at the trailhead is 8061’.

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September PVS

SB Mountain SAR is in the process of hosting a personal vertical skills (PVS) class. The check-off is this coming Saturday, 9/22/2011 in the Heart Bar area. The photos below are a classroom session in preparation for the test. Keep in mind that PVS is required for BMC.

Director's Dialogue September 2011

Dan Whitten:

At this time the Board Members of the IESARC would like to on behalf of all of our SAR members thank Dan for a job well done. As our SAR Coordinator for almost 3 years he has done a terrific job. He has been a valuable mentor and friend to many of us in our SAR community. He will greatly be missed by the Cave Team, who is his assigned Unit and by all our other SAR Units as well who have had the pleasure of working with Dan over the years. We all would like to wish Dan the very best with his new assignment at the Yucaipa Station.

As the Director of the SAR Council during his entire stay at VF, I would personally like to thank Dan for all of his help, assistance and knowledge that he has shared with me over these last 3 years. Thank you Dan!

ICS TEAM:

The SAR Council and Volunteer Forces are happy to announce that the new countywide ICS Team is now fully operational. Twenty-one of our SAR members have taken on the task of being ICS responders when our various stations request, through VF, the need for overhead management staffing for SAR and disaster operations.

Our ICS Team members have responded to numerous missions during the last several months and we are happy to report that all has gone extremely well. The coordination between the ICS Team and the various station personnel has been well received and our SAR searchers are seeing less time it the CP.. The assignments are being made quicker and responders are being deployed into the field in a timely manner. This has been a huge asset to our SAR operations

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SGSAR Calvert and Johnston Memorial Golf Tourney

San Gorgonio SAR is hosting its annual golf tournament. See the flyer for details.

BMC is Around the Corner

It’s time to be thinking about our Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC). The lecture portion will be held on November 19 and 20 at the Mountain Team’s rescue shack in San Bernardino. The field portion will be held at Snow Valley on January 21 and 22. All individuals intending to take the course or the recertification must register with Dave at Volunteer Forces. A $50 deposit must be sent with registration. It will be returned if you attend the course. If not, it will be donated to IESARC. Personal vertical skills (PVS) is a requirement for the course. Contact Sonny Lawrence, Cave and Technical Rescue Team at slawrence@sbsar.org or 909-255-6036 for further information.

SB Mountain SAR Hosting PVS Class

SB Mountain SAR is hosting a PVS class Tuesday and Thursday beginning on September 6. You can read the flyer for details. Contact Justin Wheaton at his sbsar.org email address to sign up.

West Valley SAR Member Quoted in Local Paper

Colleen Alton of West Valley SAR is quoted in a recent piece in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Read the details.

Camp No Limits

On Saturday, June 18th several representatives of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department search & rescue volunteers answered a rather unusual “call to duty” at Pine Summit Camp in Big Bear Lake. Aside from Mike Ward of the Inland Empire SAR Council, eight members of the Big Bear Sheriff’s Posse (mounted search & rescue), two Big Bear SAR members, one Apple Valley SAR and two SAR members from Wrightwood/Phelan, along with three Big Bear Posse horses and an extensive array of search & rescue vehicles and equipment, responded to a request on behalf of “Camp No Limits” to provide a “hands on” experience for their group of youngsters (ages 3 to 17) who are missing one or more limbs.

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