Search and Rescue (SAR) experts, Pete Roberts and Carl Hamilton, will be travelling to the United States to speak at the Washington State Search and Rescue conference 18-21 May about internationally transferable ideas they have developed in Northumberland as long-standing members of the Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team (NNPMRT).
The duo will be teaching a Search Skills day course along with delivering specific lectures on aspects of searching for missing persons developed in Northumberland. They will also be joined by a local ‘guru’ of search management, Mr Rick LaValla from Olympia, Washington State, to launch and teach their search skills training library of teaching resources which will be available for free from The Centre for Search Research (TCSR) website.
Pete and Carl are both former Team Leaders of NNPMRT and have extensive experience and expertise in SAR activities developed over a long period of team membership – Pete has been a member for 40+ years and Carl for 30+ years. They were both involved in the major search operations following the Lockerbie air disaster and have attended countless call outs to help missing and injured people. In 1997 they formed The Centre for Search Research (TCSR) as a registered charity to allow them to continue to research into aspects of search and rescue. The work Pete and Carl do for TCSR, and as members of NNPMRT, is entirely voluntary. Their published research on search and rescue is freely available via the TCSR website – www.searchresearch.org.uk.
Pete and Carl have spoken at many conferences around the world; the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Iceland and Poland.