EL DORADO COUNTY, Calif. – This past September, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue (SAR) hosted its yearly large-scale training symposium at Sierra-at-Tahoe Ski Resort.  This was a three-day function that is hosted two times a year, emphasizing spring/summer and fall/winter operations.  September highlighted our responses in spring and summer where the emphasis was on high elevation responses.  More than 80 volunteers, full-time staff, and Sheriff’s Explorers participated, conducting training in the areas of night navigation, overnight survival, off-highway vehicle use, K-9’s and use of drones for conducting searches. 

SAR conducted a large-scale search scenario practicing skills necessary to perform in our National Forest lands using the lands surrounding Sierra at Tahoe.  We had scenario-based encounters that provided a learning environment closely related to what a volunteer might face on the many search incidents seen every day.   This included processing scenes, working on aircraft needs, and basic medical care.

SAR K-9 search dogs participated in practicing search and rescue missions that covered wide areas of difficult terrain. Members practiced and were certified in helicopter-rescue awareness, patient loading/unloading into an aircraft, patient packaging for transportation, and technical rope rescue techniques.

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue program would like to extend a huge thank you to our Sierra-at-Tahoe Ski Resort management and team members, who were instrumental in making this exercise possible. 

The goal of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue is to provide emergency search and rescue services to the residents and visitors of El Dorado County. Search and Rescue also provides emergency aid to the Sheriff’s Office in times of natural and man-made disasters.

We have a motto that reads, “So That Others May Live.”

If you are interested in joining the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue program, both in South Lake Tahoe and the Western Slope, please visit https://www.eldoradosar.org/.

-El Dorado County SAR

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