Sea Exercise

CAPTION: Auxiliary Coast Guard boat, Kenny B, pulls one of the rescue dummies out of the water Wednesday afternoon during the Search and Rescue exercise in the Northumberland Strait.

Search and Rescue exercise a success

Ryan Quigley

Journal Pioneer

About three hours after the exercise rescue dummies found themselves placed in the water by Search and Rescue Preparedness officers, the last one of four was picked up and declared inanimate in the Northumberland Strait Wednesday afternoon during the Search and Rescue exercise.

The exercise was a simulation of a downed aircraft that crashed in the ocean after losing contact with the air base in Moncton.

Members from the Summerside Coast Guard, Auxiliary Coast Guard, and RCMP were part of the exercise in boats, while the Civilian Air Search And Rescue Association (CASARA) took part in an airplane.

The exercise began with the preparedness officers leaving an Emergency Locator Transmitter, what is used on aircrafts to trace locations, on a buoy showing a crash site. The officers then put four rescue dummies into the water, about a mile apart, with the last dummy about 4 miles west of the Confederation Bridge at about 10 a.m. Wednesday morning. At about 12 p.m. Search and Rescue teams deployed, with the CASARA aircraft detecting the emergency location transmitter, giving its location to the boats. The vessels were then commanded by the Coast Guard and preparedness officers for search patterns, while the airplane searched from the air.

At about 12:40 the first mannequin was spotted and rescued. About twenty-five minutes later the other three had been found and retrieved.

During the period before the simulation began, the Cap Nord, a 47-foot Search and Rescue lifeboat, ran hoisting exercises in Cape Egmont with a Comront helicopter from Greenwood, Nova Scotia during the morning.

John Drake, one of the preparedness officers, said they ran the hoisting exercises while they deployed the dummies so they would have the boats farther away from the target.

“A lot of times, if we have them pre-deployed, (boats) come out of the harbour somebody picks it off right off the bat and then it’s lights out, game over for the exercise. So we wanted to get these guys further to the west, we’d head out east to the Confederation Bridge, drop everything off and get it all in position.”

During a de-briefing after exercise, the participants were all positive to the experience.

Drake said the exercise was a successful.

“Communications were definitely on the upper side of the exercise, no problems at all,” he said. “The resources, when they were tasked to positions, they all seemed to find the positions and find the gear.”

Drake said the exercises are good for the organizations to become familiar with each other so they will work together better in the future.

“We don’t spend enough time working together, all the resources, and that’s kind of a drag. You got a lot of local resources between the auxiliary, local fire, the Coast Guard and the RCMP, and it just seems like everybody is living in their own world when it comes to this stuff. It’s unfortunate,” he said. “A lot of times what happens is somebody has to come from somewhere else to organize a big exercise which doesn’t have to happen. You could have a smaller one and still get everyone out practicing.”