When you press the SOS button on your satellite communicator or make contact with a rescue team, the information you provide determines how quickly and effectively the rescue occurs.
A crisis is the worst time to rely on memory for the details rescue teams will ask for. If the situation is life-threatening, having that information organized in advance makes the rescue more efficient.
Knowing how to communicate with search and rescue starts with having the right information prepared before the crisis hits. I write my rescue checklist on a wet notes pad and keep it in my possibles pouch. When my buddy has a bleed or I’m dealing with a broken leg, I don’t want to rely on memory.
The information below covers everything rescue teams want to know, whether they’re arriving by helicopter, ATV, horseback, or on foot.
Write Your Rescue Checklist Before the Emergency Happens
The time to figure out how to communicate with search and rescue isn’t during the emergency itself. A crisis is exactly when you’re most likely to blank on the details that matter.
A pre-written rescue checklist on a wet notes pad, stored in your possibles pouch, keeps the right information at your fingertips so you don’t have to rely on memory. This checklist helps rescue teams bring the proper resources so they can get you out of the field efficiently.
Whether the emergency is life-threatening or not, organized information speeds up the entire rescue process. Think through these categories ahead of time, write them down, and keep them where you can reach them fast.
Help Rescuers Find You With Accurate Location Details
Rescue teams will likely have your GPS coordinates if you’ve activated an SOS beacon. Finding a person on a mountain or deep in the wilderness, though, is more complicated than hovering over a set of latitude and longitude numbers.
Descriptive landmarks help rescue teams get to your position faster than coordinates alone. Relay specifics: a nearby cabin, a river junction, your position relative to a prominent peak. “I’m just north of a prominent peak” or “I’m at a certain junction of the river” gives rescuers visual reference points that GPS coordinates alone can’t provide.
Mark your position with survival signaling tools so the team can identify you from the air or at a distance. If you’ve moved since activating your SOS, communicate updated grid or GPS coordinates when the rescue team contacts you. They may ask you to confirm your position, since every rescue asset’s approach is different.
Report Current Weather at Your Location
Rescue teams, especially airborne ones, can’t always see what conditions look like on the ground. Relaying real-time weather from your position gives incoming aircraft the information they need to reach you.
Pass along wind conditions, ground fog, flooding, wildfire smoke, and any visibility issues that could complicate the rescue. A helicopter crew flying toward your position can’t help if they don’t know you’re sitting in a blizzard on the ground.
These conditions affect your own decisions, too. If you’re under tree cover and a helicopter is en route, moving to an open meadow makes you visible from the air. If ground fog rolls in, pass that along so the team knows what they’re flying into.
Communicate the Number of People and Their Condition
Medical information helps the rescue team have the right assets ready when they arrive. Pass along exactly how many people are in your group and each person’s condition.
A clear personnel count with medical status lets rescue teams pre-stage the right medical assets before they reach you. “Three of us. Two are fine. One is unconscious with a possible broken leg” gives the team a complete picture in one sentence.
Include details about how the injury happened, if you know: a fall, a hit to the head, signs of a concussion. Passing along these details helps the rescue team prep before they ever reach your position.
Describe Life-Threatening Injuries in Specific Terms
When someone in your group has a life-threatening injury, the specifics you relay directly affect what the medical team brings and how ready they are when they arrive.
Relay the injury location, type, severity, what treatment you’ve applied, and how long the person has been in that condition. “He’s got a bad bleed on his thigh. It may or may not be femoral, but we’ve got a tourniquet on” tells the rescue team exactly what supplies and personnel to have ready when they step off the helicopter or out of the side-by-side.
For fractures, describe what you see: “Compound fracture of the leg. The bone is sticking out. It’s been this way for three hours.” Time-specific details affect the medical team’s treatment decisions before they ever arrive at your location.
Request Medications Your Group Members Left Behind
Sometimes a group member forgets to pack prescribed medications. If that happens in the backcountry, the rescue team can bring what you can’t get on your own.
Communicating medication requests to the rescue team, whether that’s an EpiPen for a bee sting allergy or an inhaler for an asthmatic partner, means they can have it in hand when they reach you.
This ties back to your backcountry communication plan. Knowing your group members’ medical conditions and prescriptions before the trip starts puts you in a position to relay that information accurately when it counts.
How to Communicate With Search and Rescue: Prep Your Checklist Today
Every rescue asset responds differently. Some fly in. Some come on horseback, ATVs, or snowmachines. Some arrive on foot.
The one constant when learning how to communicate with search and rescue: organized, specific information speeds up every type of response. Write the checklist down. Keep it in your possibles pouch. When the crisis comes, you’ll have what rescue teams need instead of trying to pull it from memory.
by John Barklow, a Special Operations Survival Instructor and consultant who has spent decades teaching military personnel and civilians survival techniques in extreme environments.
