Pete Roberts

Two seasoned mountain rescuers are heading to Iceland to share their knowledge with international colleagues.

Search and rescue experts Pete Roberts and Carl Hamilton will be speaking at Iceland’s biannual search and rescue conference this week about transferable ideas they have developed as long-standing members of the Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team.

Mr Roberts will speak about how a mountain rescue team responds to a call for help from the police in what they call ‘the initial response’, a crucial time during which it is important to get things right when an urgent and speedy response is called for.

Carl Hamilton

Mr Hamilton will be speaking about techniques and tactics for searching at night. About 60 per cent of all calls to mountain rescue come between the hours of 4 pm and 10 pm so night-searching skills are essential for a speedy response.

They will also be teaching a day’s course on how, in the UK, they manage a search-and-rescue incident using a generic problem-solving process they have developed in Northumberland. This will be delivered to members of Icelandic SAR teams as part of their on-going training.

The men are both former team leaders of NNPMRT and have extensive experience and expertise in SAR activities developed over a long period of team membership. Mr Roberts has been a member for more than 40 years and his colleague for more than30 years.

They were both involved in the major search operations following the Lockerbie air disaster and have attended countless call outs to help missing and injured people. In 1997 they formed The Centre for Search Research as a registered charity to allow them to continue to research into aspects of search and rescue.

Teaching a search-skills course to volunteers in Ireland

The work the pair do for TCSR, and as members of NNPMRT, is entirely voluntary. Their published research on search and rescue is freely available via the TCSR website.

The two rescue experts have spoken at many conferences around the world, including in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and now Iceland. In December they will travel to Poland to speak to groups there about their work.