SPOTLIGHT
SHIFTING GEARS
Search and Rescue Volunteer BY K. RICHARD DOUGLAS
I
f it weren’t for volunteers, society would suffer. Volunteers fill in the gaps and provide the additional resources often needed to accomplish important tasks. Few undertakings are more important than finding someone who is lost or providing aid after a disaster. This effort often relies on the talents of trained volunteers to supplement the work of full-time professionals.
Anthony Rubino, a medical device network risk manager for Scripps Biomedical Engineering, part of the Scripps Information Services Team in San Diego, California, has been a member of the San Diego County Sheriff Search and Rescue (SAR) for five years. “Originally, I learned of the organization through one of my fellow biomeds but later found several other Scripps employees were also members including our CEO, chief medical officer, a vice president and multiple directors. It turns out Scripps has a very strong relationship with San Diego County Sheriff Emergency Services as a leading health care provider should. I found involvement in SAR to be the exact mix of physical and mental challenges I craved,” Rubino says. He says that when he first joined, he completed a four-month academy where he
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was certified as an emergency medical responder and taught land navigation, man tracking, rope rescue skills, radio communications, helicopter operations, evidence collection and more. “I had familiarity with some of these topics from time I spent in the U.S. Marines but the quality of training in the SAR academy improved my skills beyond anything I possessed previously. In the years since the academy, I’ve responded to all kinds of searches from missing dementia patients in urban environments to lost backcountry hikers. Including the occasional mutual aid request from other California counties. Most notably, I spent two weeks in Paradise and Magalia, California, searching for remains after the 2018 Camp Fire,” Rubino says. He says that as with most SAR organizations in California, “we are all volunteers, we pay for our own equipment and donate our time all in the interest of helping our neighbors at a time when they need it most.” AN IMPORTANT, BUT DIFFICULT TASK One of the worst disasters to hit California was the Camp Fire, which was ignited on November 8, 2018, and was the state’s deadliest wildfire. It lasted for two weeks and resulted in the deaths of 86 people.
“The San Diego County Sheriff responded to a mutual aid search and rescue request from Butte County in late 2018 as a result of the Camp Fire. I deployed twice, one week before Thanksgiving, then another the week after. When we arrived at the operating base, I was struck by the scale and complexity of the operation. It was the largest and most complex non-military camp I had ever witnessed. There were hundreds of volunteers from across the country operating out of a camp with everything needed for support: advanced communication systems, gas stations, laundry facilities, portable showers, medical, headquarters, supply, and dozens of temperature-controlled tents for the teams. It was a fully functional, self-sustaining portable village,” Rubino says. Rubino says that as impressive as the operation was, it paled in comparison to the magnitude of the fire’s destruction. “During my deployment, I received assignments in both Magalia, California, and Paradise, California; two communities that were almost entirely reduced to 18-inches of debris in the wake of the fire. Our primary objective was to locate human remains. A surprisingly difficult task given some of the hazards we encountered. First and foremost being the condition of, not only the structures we searched, but what
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