By Adam Donnelly

Kamloops Search and Rescue hope to find new members

Sep 19, 2017 | 4:16 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops Search and Rescue provide a necessary service to our community, sometimes risking life and limb to help those who find themselves caught out in the mother nature unprepared. Like many volunteer organizations, KSAR is in need of new members to ensure they’re able to fill the needs of the community. In this case, responding to any rescue scenario they’re called into.

On Saturday, a team of Kamloops Search and Rescue members took to the hills below Thompson Rivers University to do some training.

“Often, we’ll go out and do training exercises in locations where we get called out,” KSAR Search Manager Alan Hobler explained. “We had about 12 members show up, which is okay. [Our] numbers are getting a little low.”

That’s nothing new for KSAR. Hobler says it seems his organization is in a perpetual state of recruitment.

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“People usually have a romantic notion of what being on Search and Rescue is like. Reality is, it’s a lot of training and the call-outs are always at inconvenient times.”

On Saturday, new member Jamie Peloquin got his first opportunity to see what it searches and rescue does in the field.

“This was my first time out with Kamloops Search and Rescue,” Peloquin explained. “I did orientation [Friday] and went out today.”

Peloquin says he’s looking forward to more training and improving his search and rescue skill set.

While the public usually only sees the end result of what Kamloops Search and Rescue does, there’s a great deal of hard work and coordination that goes into making the organization work, which is why Hobler didn’t sugar coat the expectations Kamloops Search and Rescue has for new members.

“We’re looking for about 200 hours a year,” Hobler said. “You’ve really got to think about what you’re doing now that you’re going to be giving up to meet that 200 hours a year.”

For Hobler, and the other members of Kamloops Search and Rescue, it’s less about what they give up by volunteering and more about what they gain by helping those who need it.