Annual search and rescue simulation in National Park a success

Landsar had its annual Search & Rescue Exercise in Whakahoro over the weekend. Photo / Supplied

LandSAR (Land Search and Rescue) Whanganui spent the weekend in the back of National Park at Blue Duck Station at Whakahoro carrying out a full search simulation.

Five teams with members from Whanganui, Taihape and Ruapehu LandSAR groups took part in an exercise involving a full scale search based on information that a fictional 15-year-old boy failed to return home from goat hunting.

Training co-ordinator Elly Arnst said it was their biggest annual training exercise.

"It was a fantastic weekend. It's a pretty stunning, but rugged piece of country," she said.

"It's also good training for the IMT (the incident management team) because they don't know what the scenario is either.

"It's basically a full search simulation."

Members from Whanganui, Taihape and Ruapehu LandSAR groups took part in the weekends exercises at Whakahoro. Photo / Elly Arnst

There were 26 members in the field and they were fed small amounts of information about the scenario.

All teams spent the night camped outside and conducted a number of night searching exercises, Arnst said.