Roughly 200 search-and-rescue volunteers discovered new skills and new tools Saturday in the back country south of Ashland.With cables draped over a cliff near Howard Prairie Lake, teams of eight rope rescue volunteers from Southern Oregon and northern California learned to use Jackson County's all-titanium rescue litter with an Arizona Vortex, a tripod-shaped piece of equipment used to precisely guide the rope.Jackson County Search and Rescue Manager Chris Duran said the litter, which weighs
Jackson County Search and Rescue Manager Chris Duran said the litter, which weighs only 16 pounds, is an expensive piece of equipment that not all search and rescue agencies in the California Oregon Regional Search and Rescue network have, and the exercise is an opportunity to get familiar with it. Before the litter began its ascent to the top of the cliff, Mark Unger used a video feed from a flying drone to check on the rescuer at the bottom and the person inside the litter.The rope exercise, taught by an instructor from Bend-based Crackerjack First Response Specialists, was one of many classes available at the annual CORSAR Summer Exercise, which had exercises for 4-wheeler search-and-rescue teams, paramedics, canine and horse-mounted teams. Participants represented eight counties, including Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, Klamath, Curry and Coos counties in Oregon and Siskiyou and Del Norte counties in California.The event was an opportunity for vendors to introduce new technology to rescuers for consideration. In an exercise where rescuers needed to extract a sunken boat from Hyatt Lake, San Jose-based Deep Ocean Engineering demonstrated its Phantom T5 underwater drone. John Bergman and Raul Pena, vice presidents of Deep Ocean, showcased the capabilities of the drone, which is designed for waters that may be treacherous or difficult to see through for human divers. the drone can mark areas of interest and can run autonomously so searchers can focus on the camera feed.