**** HSAR, Release
Halifax Search and Rescue Celebrates 50 + 1 Anniversary
When a child goes missing, a hiker needs added assistance, or a senior citizen wanders due to dementia, calls to ground search and rescue volunteers are among the first calls that police agencies make in the Halifax Regional Municipality.
Halifax Search & Rescue is an entirely volunteer led and resourced organization. As a Canadian Revenue Agency registered non-profit organization, we provide an on-site and mobile, self-sufficient ground search and rescue team working with a command structure capable of responding 24/7 in many contexts outside traditional wilderness search and rescue.
While the team receives an operational grant from the Halifax Regional Municipality, we fundraise to purchase all capital assets. Each of the teams nearly 130 volunteers provide their own individual equipment required to be part of the team.
Nearly 81% of the municipalities approximately 289 ground search and rescue calls originated in areas covered by Halifax Search and Rescue over the last nine years. HSAR has experienced its single busiest year since coordinating the ground recovery efforts for SwissAir Flight 111 in 1998. In 2022, HSAR responded to 62 incidents, an increase of 52% in call outs over the previous year alone.
Responses to civil emergencies -neighbours helping neighbours- dramatically increased in 2022 as the team moved to support the most vulnerable among our population by conducting welfare checks on our neighbours living rough during extreme weather incidents. This included being on the roads as Hurricane Fiona visited Nova Scotia and during the recent extreme cold weather event.
As the full effect of Fiona became clear, HSAR coordinated the service requests in the Nova Scotia Provincial Coordination Centre for 14 days, ensuring rapid dissemination to provincial GSAR teams. As Atlantic Canada’s largest GSAR team, this also meant we had the resources to simultaneously support the municipal requests for assistance, conduct a missing persons search in Prospect, and dispatch members to a missing youth call in Pictou.
Watch our social media channels for information as it becomes available as we move to mark our 50th plus one anniversary this year.
