The 2022 Washington State SAR Conference (WASARCON) is scheduled for June 20-26 at the Kittitas Valley Event Center in Ellensburg, Washington. The event is planned to include:

• K9 Field classes in HRD, Trailing, and Air Scent disciplines.
• Day long classes in Leadership and Leadership Development.
• Day long classes in Teams and Team Deployment.
• Classes that will fulfill SAR competency requirements.

Guy will be leading two sessions at the June conference:

(1) Planning for Evidence Searches

Evidence searches (seeking human remains or crime-related objects) present special challenges to search planners, search managers, law enforcement, and SAR volunteers. In recent years,the Washington State SAR Planning Unit has provided planning expertise to a number of evidence searches, small-scale and large-scale, in both rural and wilderness environments.

In this 3-hour workshop, he will:

a) Review key concepts and characteristics of evidence searches.

b) Introduce best planning practices for evidence searches.

c) Lead students through two hands-on evidence search planning exercises.

(2) Why Searches Fail

In the past several years, SAR teams in Washington State have experienced searches that were suspended after lengthy efforts – but with the subject not located. This presentation begins with a general review of characteristics shared by these recent “failed” searches, and a review of common reasons that subjects are not found.

In mission-critical industries, such as aviation and medicine, formal “failure mode analysis” methods are used to identify the potential causes of failures and to reveal strategies to prevent them. This presentation will show examples of how such analysis methods can applied to examine causes of “failed searches.”

Visit this website to register for the conference:  https://wasarcon.org/