I posted a little reply in the check in thread. However I decided to post this thread with a little more about myself. I am 25, married, one 3 y/o daughter, with another kid on the way. I currently live in Loveland, Colorado and I work overnights doing security at a hi-tech company in Fort Collins. I guess that I have always been into preparedness to some degree since I was a cub and boy scout. When I turned 14 I joined a local fire company as part of their pre-cadet program and a local search and rescue explorer post. The SAR gig really opened up my eyes to being prepared (hey it looks bad if the search team gets lost). I thought it was crazy that people could be so blind, stupid or whatever to go into mother nature without a care in the world thinking their cell phone was all they needed for a "day hike". Anyways, I enlisted as a reservisist with the military and I think that gave me some great experiences and training. I know I learned alot about myself anyways from being in it. I kind of always knew that the government cannot take care of all its citizens in the event of a large emergency from being involved in emergency services. However Katrina was a real wake up call for me. So now I am out getting prepared and roaming the internet learning what I can to better prepare myself for the unpredictable future.
Welcome aboard, Fireranger939584. Like as not, you'll find new ideas here to go along with the stuff you already know. Please tell us what all blunders have been made that activates SAR, we might just be making those same mistakes.
It's not what we the SAR team did, it was seeing human behavior during our disaster recovery missions and how unprepared some people can be when it comes to the wilderness. One incident for example is a pizza delivery guy drove through a flooded out road and got swept away just to deliver a pizza. Come on the pizza being delivered is not worth taking a chance like that.