'A real privilege': Search and rescue volunteers celebrate with team building

Alberta Search and Rescue volunteers gathered for training and team building on Sept. 28, 2024. (Galen McDougall/CTV News Edmonton)

Search and rescue volunteers celebrated a summer of hard work on Saturday.

• Sign up for breaking news emails from CTV News Edmonton, right at your fingertips 

Search and Rescue Alberta (SAR) is a provincial volunteer association that helps people trapped or lost in hard-to-reach places.

Members met on Saturday for the first of a two-day event focused on training and team building at the River Cree Resort and Casino.

SAR president Brian Carriere said the association has almost 1,300 members, with specialized rescue skills including swift water, mountains, caves and disaster response.

"All folks from all walks of life, willing to drop what they're doing at a moment's notice and go help their neighbours," he said.

Doug Ritchie, SAR vice president, said those folks were called in by the province to help evacuate the town of Jasper in late July during the wildfire.

"I found it a real privilege to be able to go and help that day in Jasper," Ritchie said. "It made us feel like we were important, and it made the community feel safer."

SAR normally helps with backcountry or wilderness rescues, but they can also be called to assist police to find missing people or to help search for evidence or human remains. 

Carriere said SAR has been able to make some recent improvements thanks to funding from the province.

"We received over $2 million from the province of Alberta to invest in both local search and rescue teams, and the system in general," he said.

The money will help enhance communication and SAR response models, and increase the amount of training for volunteers.

"The system has improved by leaps and bounds in a very short period of time," Carriere said.

For more information, visit the SAR website.