I just finished a four day (in-person) course entitled Advanced Direction and Control of the Search Function put on by the California Office of Emergency Servic

I just finished a four day (in-person) course entitled Advanced Direction and Control of the Search Function put on by the California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES). It is intended for Search and Rescue team members - both volunteers and sheriff's deputies - who who are part of "overhead" teams managing large multi-day "campaign" searches for lost and missing individuals. It was a tightly-packed, intensive course covering everything from lost person psychology and the common behaviors of people in various types of situations based on analysis of past incidents to how to use the latest specialized technology to streamline the strategic planning, deployment, and evaluation of large searches. I joined my county's SAR team five years ago and it's been an incredibly rewarding (but time-consuming) volunteer avocation. There is so much to know and California has a world-class system of training, certification, and management for our SAR teams. One fantastic aspect of the CA state government is the OES and our mutual aid system. This system provides a formalized structure for counties to assist each other when they have something going on - like a wildfire, earthquake, missing person, law enforcement issue, etc. that they can't handle with their own internal resources. A county makes a request to the state - a fire example: "we need 5 type-1 wildfire strike teams, 3 fixed-wing water dropping aircraft, and 4 bulldozers tomorrow morning to help fight this fire that just broke out in our county." OES then puts the request out to surrounding counties who if available, mobilize and show up where needed. Edit: If you're interested in how practically all emergency incidents are handled, reading up on the Incident Command System (ICS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS). Anyway, that's getting rambling and more something behind-the-scenes that I know about and have experience with. I'm quite honored to be able to participate in these operations which can be directly lifesaving. AMA.