Our local Search and Rescue team have recently started using the park as a training venue and will be holding an event this month to demonstrate their work. The work of Lowland Rescue comes under the same umbrella agency (UKSAR), along with the better-known organisations such as Mountain Rescue, RNLI, Cave Rescue and HM Coastguard, and it is made up of unpaid volunteers trained to extremely high national (and international) standards.
You may have not heard of Lowland Rescue; this is because the vast majority of their work is looking for vulnerable missing persons between the high water mark and the mountains. By its very nature, the people being searched for and the process of doing it, needs to be kept away from the media. OxSAR is tasked by Thames Valley Police, Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue and the Thames Valley Local Resilience Forum. The team also respond to calls for mutual assistance from other SAR teams around the country, providing specialist search techniques and boots on the ground.
Keeping out of the public eye while on active call-outs does mean that their public profile is near non-existent and because of that raising funds can be extremely challenging. There is no central funding for the Search and Rescue teams (only HM Coast Guard), and the entire team is completely donation and occasionally hard-won grant funded.
To help raise their profile and possibly much needed funds, OxSAR as they are better known, will be holding a “show and tell” event here on the 13 August. They will be demonstrating their search techniques and kit, including boats, sonar, drones, dogs and medical support, from midday outside the Manor Café.
Later that evening OxSAR will be holding a training exercise in the grounds practicing “point of find” which includes medical interventions and forensic security. This is just one small part of the varied and professional services they provide.
Come along from midday 13 August and meet the team!
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