CSAR Basic Search Management (BSM)

Class runs remotely each Thursday of the week from 6-9p and a final in-person practicum weekend on June 1st and 2nd. The location of the practicum weekend is TBD, but it will be either the Leadville or Breckenridge CMC.

Designed for experienced rescue members interested in or ready to take on more of a leadership role on searches with their organization.

The BSM class intends to familiarize students with a bigger picture understanding of searches, focus and practice in the management roles of a search, along with getting students to think about the management handoff, and multi-day search events. This Spring, the class will be made up of 7 remote sessions and 1, 2-day, in-person practicum weekend.

Class Dates are: 

• April 18th and 25th
• May 2nd, 9th, 16th 23rd and 30th
• Weekend Practicum June 1st and 2nd

Prerequisites: 

You must have access to the following, and have experience in utilizing them - either in a practice environment, mock mission environment, or actual mission:

• • A laptop or desktop computer (the instructors suggest access to two monitors) that has access to video and audio. 
  • An internet connection that allows for video conferencing with your camera on. Please consider utilizing your rescue HQ or office as an option for internet service and/or physically connecting to your modem with a CAT5 cable to help mitigate connectivity issues. 
  • The Lost Person Behavior textbook or the smartphone application. The instructors recommend the smartphone application. 

All students must additionally have functional skills in SARTopo https://sartopo.com/.

If you have never used SARTopo before, the instructors suggest that you enroll in, and complete, CSAR’s SARTopo course - Summer dates for this course will be released in the near future. If you are unable to participate in a CSAR SARTopo course, SARTopo does provide the following self-paced course on its website: https://training.caltopo.com/firstresponse/course. We have experienced students falling behind and spending quite a bit of time on their own playing catch-up with their SARTopo skills. This dramatically reduces the student’s ability to learn, grow and participate effectively during the sessions and scenarios. The BSM class is not the right class to “learn” SARTopo for the first time. 

It is suggested to either complete, or review, ICS 100, ICS 200, ICS 700 and ICS 800 materials, as this course heavily utilizes ICS and NIMS structure and organization.

Please feel free to reach out to csar_education@coloradosar.org with any questions.