ELEVEN members of the Tavistock Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team had a busy weekend recently, completing a team leaders? development training course. The training event, which was held at Tavistock Rescue Centre, is designed to promote the skills of members to become team leaders. The course is based around the mountain rescue of England and Wales international guidelines, and was run by an expert in the field of search and rescue ? Bill Batson, ex-chief instructor of the Royal Air Force Mountain Rescue Service. During the weekend, modules covered included incident site management, triage and casualty care skills, search techniques, search area management, fatal incident procedures and inter agency co-operation during major incidents. The course was made up of both classroom and practical sessions that culminated into a search and rescue exercise on the Sunday afternoon, in the area of King?s Tor near Princetown. The course, which is the first of its kind to have been run in the area, was classed as a ?huge success? by the members taking part. Jamie Reading, training officer for Tavistock?s DSRT, said: ?This is part of the on going development for our team members to promote their skills and provide accredited training. ?We?ve recently had two members successfully complete the mountain rescue search managers? course held at the University of Bangor, Wales and we?re now working in co-operation with other agencies to provide swift water training and rope rescue skills for other team members.? As part of their new joint training initiative, the members were joined at the weekend by members of Cornwall Search and Rescue Team, as DSRT is now working on an operational basis with Cornwall.
