By Amy Woolvett
THE COAST GUARD
Don’t be alarmed if you happen to see groups of search and rescue teams scouring the property near the Shelburne Secondary School.
On Feb. 3, five Nova Scotia Ground Search and Rescue teams from Yarmouth, Barrington, Queens, North Queens and Lunenburg will be testing out new equipment during a training exercise.
“The purpose is to test real time tracking technology that all of the teams have been given,” said Richard d’Entremont coordinator for the project and a member of the Barrington Search and Rescue.
To do that they will be going into the woods for close to five hours.
“We are now at the installation phase for our radios with GPS transmitting,” he said. “If there are bugs this is where we find it.”
He encouraged the public to go out and watch how the teams work.
“Come out if you want to see what it is we do,” he said.
He said that rather than have someone have to sit out in the cold all day, he would probably be putting a teddy bear in the woods for the teams to track.
He said that the new equipment is a great improvement on their old radios.
“With the GPS we don’t always have to ask where team members are,” he said.
He explained that instead he could view a screen that shows where each radio is. This also helps with having a more efficient search range.
Training programs like this help to create a more efficient search in real life emergencies like when a person is missing.
“This will help us to see what kind of problems we might run into,” said d’Entremont.
