By By GREG KATSKI
Community Editor
During a three-day display at Camp Bonner North and Goose Creek State Park, NC C.E.R.T. showed why its certified to help any search-and-rescue mission.
The North Carolina Canine Emergency Response Team’s 10th annual Eastern Search Exercise, which was held from Friday to today, was a full-scale mission that covered every aspect of a real search, including field search operations, communications and support.
A scenario was mapped out at the beginning of the search that detailed two men were missing in the woods near Camp Bonner North, and that the men were possibly in possession of an infant. As the search went on from Friday night into Saturday morning, details trickled in, turning the search into a homicide investigation, with two dead and one still missing.
Like any real life investigation, information was being received through the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and provided to the searchers on scene.
A variety of search-and-rescue tools were used during the investigation, including tracking dogs, cadaver dogs, swift water boats, Viper 800 radios and GPS devices.
The tools were provided and used by different agencies from across the state and country, including the Bunyan Volunteer Fire Department, Little Swift Creek Volunteer Fire Department, Pender County Search and Rescue, Roberson County Search and Rescue, Stanley County Sheriff’s Office, N.C. State Highway Patrol, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense.
The operation was supported by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office and Beaufort County Emergency Management.
NC C.E.R.T. Chief Mac Morgan said the point of the varied and lengthy three-day mission was to allow individuals with all of these agencies to use their specialized search skills.
“They all have different skills. We try to incorporate whatever their skills are,” Morgan said.
“It gives everybody a chance to find where they fit in,” he added.
Morgan was a natural fit with NC C.E.R.T., a nonprofit search-and-rescue organization that responds to requests from law enforcement agencies and emergency management agencies during natural or man-made disasters, structure and building collapses, drownings and lost persons in urban and wilderness settings, at no cost to the requesting agency, according to NC C.E.R.T.’s Web site.
Morgan, a former law enforcement officer, has been doing search-and-rescue for over 30 years. He said he’s been called out to “major catastrophes,” including Hurricane Floyd.
“You’ve got to be about 90 percent crazy” to volunteer for NC C.E.R.T, Morgan said.
He said it’s a way to give back to the community, considering more than 700,000 people go missing every year in the U.S.
“Some people say it’s a hobby. It’s not — it’s a way of life,” Morgan said.
On Saturday afternoon, Morgan said he was pleased with how the exercise was going.
Division Safety Officer Yancy King with North Carolina State Parks, who was working as a liaison during the exercise, said it started slow.
“But that’s what exercises are for; so we can be efficient with a real search,” he said.