Search and Rescue Volunteers Have Record Year for Lifesaving

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department volunteer search-and-rescue teams saved dozens of lives on nearly 600 missions during a record-setting 2014, officials said today.

Volunteers -- who are skilled mountaineers and emergency medical technicians -- responded to 597 missions, more than a 20 percent increase over 2013.

The rescues by the department’s eight volunteer teams of 170 reserve sheriff’s deputies and civilians involved missing hikers, motorcycle crashes over the sides of highways, cliff rescues and dog rescues. Some even helped the Museum of Natural History “rescue” a 16-million-year-old fossil discovered in a ravine as part of an ad hoc training exercise.

Volunteers are often called out to assist in other counties and have been deployed in snowstorms and blazing heat, from sea level to 14,000 feet and at the bottom of mine shafts, officials said.

The only paid crews are those who staff the department’s Air 5 rescue helicopter.

• City News Service