Search and Rescue Training Exercise at Downs Park

Law enforcement and rescue agencies from around Anne Arundel County came together in the chilly weather on Tuesday for a training exercise at the John H. Downs Memorial Park in Pasadena.

The exercise was intended to help these agencies train in on-site incident management, land-based search and rescue and interoperable communications skills.

Organizations that participated included:

• Anne Arundel County Police Department
• Anne Arundel County Fire Department
• Anne Arundel County Office of Emergency Management
• Anne Arundel County Department of Recreation & Parks
• Maryland State Police
• Maryland Natural Resources Police
• Chesapeake Search Dogs
• Calvert K-9 Search Team

The exercise consisted of a scenario involving three victims with dementia lost in the woods at the park. Two victims were played by actors lost in various parts of the park while one was a training dummy placed in a ravine. According to the exercise, while the victims had dementia, they were still mobile and were not fully dressed for the winter weather. The various agencies worked together to search for the victims using the resources available - search dogs and helicopters.

"The capabilities we're evaluating today, such as on-scene asset managment, interoperable communications and some aspects of search and rescue could be applied to any type of scenario that might require those things," said Lt. Herbert Hasenpusch with the Anne Arundel County Police Department.

"All emergencies require on-scene management and might require interoperable communications," added Hasenpusch. "We built this scenario around those capabilities that we're trying to exercise."

Hasenpusch said that there have been other similar exercises sponsored by the county government and that the county tries to run a full exercise at least once per year.

"These exercises are within the county government, we also participate in other full-scale exercises at a regional and state level," said Hasenpusch.

"It's a great asset for us to be able to learn with all the different (agencies), not just exercise-wise but communication-wise and everything," said Anne Arundel County Fire Department Battallion Chief Steve Thompson as several members of the department's rope rescue team worked to rescue the dummy victim.

"We're not only exercising our skills, we're also exercising our communication and our ability to work together."

"One of the principles for this kind of search when we get a person that's reported missing is that we look at a 500-meter radius around where the person was last seen and target to confidently clear that area," added Thompson, who said that generally if missing people leave that 500-meter area they become far more difficult to locate.

The agencies were coordinated through a command center  set-up near the entrance to the park. They were able to work together and find all three victims by 1 p.m. Discovery and retrieval methods included the use of a rope lift across a ravine by the Fire Department and the use of a bloodhound.