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Sunday Sitdown

GENE KELLUM

PRESIDENT, HOUSTON COUNTY SEARCH AND RESCUE

By Greg Ritchie

Messenger Reporter

The Messenger continues its Sunday Sitdown reports where we speak with our local pastors, educators, local businesspeople, students and interesting people of all walks of life in Houston County. To see the full video interview, click on the link below. The Messenger would like to thank Cutshaw Chevrolet in Grapeland for sponsoring this week’s edition.

What is Houston County Search And Rescue (SAR) working to accomplish?

“We are training and gearing up to handle anything from a lost person, to an Alzheimer’s patient wandering off, to a missing child, to a water rescue all the way up to a natural disaster. About one year ago, we had the tornadoes that came through. We worked our way to clear the roadways on F.M. 229 and cleared TX Highway 21 all the way to Austonio. There was a family who had their house blow away down there – they couldn’t even get an ambulance down to them. We assisted in getting the roadways clear, getting the ambulance to them and got them in the ambulance and got them sent off. I want to thank the storm tracker who was chasing the storm that night. He saved a gentleman’s life because he saw the house get blown away and stop and applied a tourniquet. If he had not done that, the man might not have made it. Our goal is to support the people in law enforcement. Our fire departments in Houston County are shorthanded, law enforcement is shorthanded and we work together with all of them.”

What kind of training does SAR perform?

“We train constantly every month. I know these days, everybody wants to rely on their cell phone. Well, I’ve got news for you. There are a lot of areas in our county where your cell phone won’t work. So you have to go old school and get the compass out! We train on an ICS which is Incident Command Structure. We have a structure with an officer body and it goes down to sergeants or safety officers and team leaders. As far as the training goes, we train everywhere – we do water rescue training, chainsaw training, low angle rescue training, rappelling and search training. The old days of lining up 50 people and stomp through the woods are over with. You’ll spend a week out there trying to find somebody while the whole time the people are getting dehydrated or exposed to the elements. Time is of the essence. Our members are trained and all of our members are a CPR, AED certified and stop-the-bleed certified. We bring in young people with no experience but we try to train them and give them experience and teach them life skills. We try to teach them how to be responsible adults – how to take care of themselves and how to care of others. That’s what SAR is all about. This group is made up of nothing but volunteers. Most of these people pay out of their pocket for training.”

What should people do if they get lost?

“We went out on Valentine’s Day and retrieved two young ladies out of the woods. From the time we located their vehicle, to the time we were handling them water was an hour and eight minutes. It took us about an hour to get them out because they were two miles in the brush and forest. A lot of people don’t realize, when the good Lord turns the lights out in the National Forest, it brings home a level of darkness and everything looks the same. You can sit there and turn around in a circle and it all looks the same. The best thing I can tell people if you’re lost, please stop where you are. If you have a cell signal, call 911 and they will get us on the way. We’ve had people who see the helicopter overhead and they’re trying to stay in the spotlight of the helicopter. Every time they move, we have to get a new GPS ccordinate. So the best thing you can do is stay put.”

How does ‘profiling’ help search and rescue operations?

“That is a new cutting edge idea. There is a doctor who compiled cases from missing people all over the United States, about 250 cases. And he studied their behavior. Everybody acts different. An Alzheimer’s patient or a person with dementia will go in a nearly straight line until they hit an obstacle and they can’t get through it – and that’s where you will find them. They’ll sit down. Whereas a hunter, woodsman, fisherman or activist hiker you tend to find them along a creek or fence row. They know water goes down hill, so they look for a creek at the bottom of a hill and follow the creek out. Or they find a fence and follow it out. Children for example, are unique. Children have a built-in protection – nature’s given them a little added protection over us adults. Children will go and they’ll wander around and then they’ll get tired, they’ll slow down. Nature has got them enough built-in senses to sit down or they’ll lay down when they get tired. We find them sitting next to a tree or laying on a log, whereas adults sometimes do not rest and keep pushing until the point of exhaustion.”

How can we the people help Houston County SAR?

“We run on strictly on donations. We’ve had great support from Houston County COOp – a couple of our vehicles have been donated by them. We thank them highly for that because they and other local businesses have been great supporters of Houston County SAR. I like to ask the people of Houston County, even though they may never go into the woods, ‘What about natural disasters?’ We are here to help the people of Houston County but we run straight on donations. We have by our own chainsaw, our own gas and we pay our own insurance. Right now, we average two hours and 45 minutes to locate someone. If anybody would like to help us, even $5, $10, $20 – whatever they can spare we would be grateful for any- and everything.”

Donations or checks can be sent to:

Houston County Search and Rescue

P.O. Box 589

Crockett, TX 75835

Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]

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