SEARCH AND RESCUE: The SAR Douchebag

The SAR Douchebag – don’t be one

In my team’s EOC (Emergency Operations Centre), there sits a trophy that no one wants to receive but inevitably someone always will.  We affectionately refer to this trophy as “The Douchebag Award”.

When someone has had a stupid attack that earns said title and everyone agrees on it, we will have them accept the trophy during a meeting in front of the team and explain what they’ve done to receive it.

This “award ceremony” is fairly light-hearted and most recipients are good sports about it, but it has a serious undertone – do NOT do that again.

In the spirit of James G’s “Contractorous Douchebagnus” series, in this article I’m going to list out some common examples of Douchebag Award recipients.  Unfortunately, these are not old wives tales of search & rescue and I have had the misfortune of experiencing each of these personally.

The “I know everything there is to know about search & rescue and I haven’t even got one callout under my belt” SAR Douchebag

For this example I shall call this guy Bob.  Bob will have recently joined your team and when asked why will reply “Well I thought I’d bring my skills to the table”.

Despite having no relevant skills or experience, Bob will feel entitled to challenge and question every part of established protocol and team leader decisions – even if his team leader has a decade’s in-field experience and Bob doesn’t have so much as one callout under his belt.  Here are some common phrases uttered by Bob with helpful translations:

“Why are we doing this?” – I just remembered a great idea I saw on Bear Grylls: Born Survivor!
“Well I think we should do this…” – Here is my great idea, feel free to compliment me on how ingenious it is.
“Why don’t we do this?” – My idea rocks, why aren’t you more enthusiastic about it?
“This seems like a much better thing to do.” – I probably wasn’t breast-fed as a child.

Just remember, no matter how experienced or skilled you are as a searcher – Bob will always know a better plan, idea or technique for searching for a missing person.  Bob will typically interrupt the highest-ranking team member during a briefing to explain his superior plan and will naturally use 2000 words when 10 would do.

Where Bob has learnt this outstanding knowledge is anyone’s guess – but hey, he’s been up for a week so you bumbling incompetents show him some respect goddammit.

The “The police called me out so I must be better than them” SAR Douchebag

For this example we shall call this guy Dan.  Dan has failed the local law enforcement selection course twice and subsequently carries a chip on his shoulder because of it.  Now that he is on a search & rescue team, Dan takes the view that since the police “called in the professionals” he effectively outranks them and is entitled to treat them like shit.

As he likes to pretend that law enforcement works for search & rescue teams and not the other way around – Dan will often be found watching the police set up a staging area while not helping and bitching about how slow they are.  However, despite his contempt for law enforcement, he will always be first in line when the police-supplied catering truck arrives.

In addition to this, during the “hurry up and wait” time, Dan will refuse to make casual conversation or even eye contact with the officers in the staging area – even if he is standing right next to one.  He will attempt to make conversation with you though – the main topics being how crap the police are at searching and why he’s better than them.

The “I’m a category 1 responder so I can drive however I want” SAR Douchebag

And finally for this last example, we shall call this guy Bill.  Bill is a perfectly normal guy until you put him behind the wheel of a car and give him a dashboard card saying “Search & Rescue – on emergency callout”.  Unfortunately for other road-users, when given one of these dashboard cards Bill interprets this as “Complete badass comin’ through – get the hell out of my way”.

Yes, Bill will tear off from the EOC like a Lebanese cab driver on crank and appear to other drivers as though he’s just dying to have the experience of a frontal collision.  When confronted and asked if he’d like the experience of explaining to someone’s family why he killed their daughter and grandkids – he will reply that he’s got the dashboard card and was driving that way so that he could locate the misper faster.

While most agree that Bill would be better suited to being a crash test dummy for Toyota and kick his ass off – I have actually known a couple of SAR teams to look the other way as they are too low on numbers and need boots on the ground.

In conclusion…

On a serious note, if you do have a “Bill” on your team, regardless of how small your team is – kick his ass off ASAP as unlike the other 2 examples, he will actually cause serious harm and the resulting shit-storm will blow back on your team in biblical fashion.

Feel free to share any of your own encounters with the above or any other breed of SAR Douchebag in the comments below.

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~Alex S
Contributing S&R Correspondent

Alex S works as a ground searcher on a lowland search & rescue team and is qualified to rescue on land and at sea. He spends his off time waiting for his callout phone to go off and laughing at drop leg admin panels.