Politics & Government

Governor's Horse Guards No Longer Ceremonial

First group trained for search and rescue

One dark and rainy night, members of the First Company Governor's Horse Guards scoured the woods for a pack of cards, observing every crunched leaf and snapped twig.

"The thing that will tell you what you need to know about the person you are searching for will be the size of a playing card or smaller," said Michael Downes, a major in the Horse Guards.

The task was part of a training program 25 members of the Horse Guards completed Dec. 2 to become the first fully trained equestrian and ground search-and-rescue team in the state of Connecticut.

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Peter J. Vernesoni, former president of Connecticut Canine Search and Rescue, spearheaded the training initiative.

"They are going to be a full-fledged search-and-rescue team," Vernesoni said.

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He was there the last time horse-mounted search and rescue was used in the state in the late 1990s, although he said there never was an official, deployable team trained to search for lost people both on foot and on horses. 

Often, the rescue component of a lost person search doesn't come into play. Either the person finds his or her own way home or a search party does not get there in time, Downes said. Horsepower may help increase the odds of getting to the subject in time.

"You're talking about a resource in which an actual searcher is sitting on a horse…eight feet off the ground," Vernesoni  said "A horse is a nice vehicle [for] areas that have to be covered in short period of time."

The Horse Guards will most likely be available for equestrian search and rescue in January 2011, Vernesoni said.

The Horse Guards were already trained for ground rescue, without the horses. Every Thursday night its members drill for horseback riding.

"The troop has always been available for search and rescue [by foot], but was very rarely called upon," Downes said. "It seemed to be a natural thing for the troop to do. . . . This is bringing us to a higher level of training capability. We'll have a well-honed professionally trained search unit as a state resource that we've never had before."

Gordie Snow, a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, led a six-day unit in training on fundamentals of search and rescue. Snow used to be the search-and-rescue director for the Mounties in New Brunswick, Canada. Lt. Jim Gosselin of the Berlin Police Department also taught the trainees about crime scene preservation.

Training, which individual guards paid for out-of-pocket, also included three two-hour courses through the Federal Emergency Management Agency on incident command structure; three days on how to run a search operation; first aid and CPR; and a course on land navigation, using compasses and GPS. The last level of training, Dec. 2, was focused on animal first aid, in case a horse is injured during the search.

"It's not easy. I found it really interesting and felt the classes were great. I'm excited to use what we've learned to help," Downes said.

Horses can cover more ground and more challenging terrain, according to Vernesoni. Downes said they will prove useful, able to travel where vehicles, humans and canine units cannot. They also have a heightened sense of smell and hearing.

"Horses are very attuned to things in the woods. A horse could actually find an individual or let a handler know there is someone in the general area," Vernesoni said. "Horses are animals that are preyed upon, so they're wary of potential animals [trying to] prey on them."

While the protocol for deployment is still being developed, Downes said the Horse Guards do not have the authority to go to every emergency call.

"The only way the Horse Guards can be deployed is by orders from the National Guard or the governor," Downes said.

The guards will be evaluated, most likely by the end of December, on how well they handle horses before they receive certification. The horses will be tested on walking through water, over logs and downed trees, across tarps, over railroad tracks and up inclines. The adjutant general of the National Guard is required to review the evaluation before the Horse Guards are deployable.

Horse-mounted search and rescue is popular nationally, Vernesoni said, used in Maine, New Hampshire, Texas, Florida and other states. His search and rescue squad, part of Emergency Support Function 9 , along with a search-and-rescue team from Manchester, recently assisted the New Hampshire Horse Guards in searching for a potential murder victim. A young female lifeguard went missing after her shift, and she still has not been found.

The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection  has used horses for searching state forests, but does not have a fully trained equestrian and ground searching team, according to Vernesoni.

ESF 9 was called for 18 searches this past year, Vernesoni said, some lasting for a couple hours and others for a few days. Horse-mounted search and rescue will be available statewide, especially for outdoor emergencies involving lost individuals who have wandered off in the wilderness or Alzheimer's patients who have gone missing.

Lost people are the statutory responsibility of fire departments, Vernesoni said. Equestrian units can assist firefighters, local and state police, the FBI and any other state or federal agencies authorized to contact ESF 9. Request for the Horse Guards would be dispatched through ESF 9.

"If something were to happen locally, the idea would be they would call ESF 9, and they could send us out to them," Downes said.

Lt. Kelly Walsh, who oversees the operation division of the Avon Police Department, said that she recalls the only time the department has needed a canine search and rescue unit. She supervised the search for a runaway teenager in 2004.

The boy left home to go camping, inspired by an adventure story he had read. The search led to the woods by New Road. The boy turned out to be close by, and returned home when he heard the commotion. However, Walsh said, a horse-mounted rescue unit would have been useful when searching in that area.

"It's hard for us to get cruisers over there," Walsh said.

Since the Horse Guards are located in Avon, deployment would be quicker to assist with Avon searches, but Downes said that the horse-mounted search and rescue unit and the state are considering ways to deploy the troops efficiently to the southern part of the state, as well.

"We're working on streamlining it," Downes said.

Though the training is over, the Horse Guards will incorporate search and rescue training into Thursday night drills on an ongoing basis. 

"We are very interested in developing this and becoming search and rescue team that was an asset to the state that the state doesn't already have," Downes said.

 


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