West Mercia Search & Rescue save people in danger.

Always on-call. Always professional. Always volunteers.

We drop everything to respond – the call could come at any time to find someone and save their life.

We care deeply about people in danger and train hard to help them.

We go in to danger and get people out safely.

We are the hand reaching to people in need. We are the first face they see when all else is lost.

We are called out by the Police and Fire Services when help is needed in finding and saving people in Shropshire, Herefordshire or Worcestershire.

We provide highly-trained, well-equipped specialists for:

• Search for missing vulnerable adults and children
• Rescue from floods
• Rescue from rivers and other waterways
• Provision of care to anyone whose life is in danger

We are all unpaid civilians, but we are audited by multiple agencies to ensure that our training, equipment and response is as reliable as the emergency services themselves.

Members

We currently have 80 members and trainees based across the region, from Malvern to Hereford to Oswestry. We plan to grow this to 100 operational members by end of 2018.

Trustees

We are governed by a board of Trustees and we answer to the Charities Commission for all spending and fundraising. Our Trustees have included a retired Chief Fire Officer of Shropshire Fire & Rescue Service, and a retired senior Police Officer, a Solicitor and experienced SAR professionals.

Bases

We have a main equipment base where we keep our vehicles. We are building fast-response and training bases in Hereford, Worcester and Shrewsbury. And all of our members can deploy from home for immediate callouts.

Equipment

We have, amongst other items:

• 6 powerboats
• 2 rafts
• a fleet of kayaks
• a drone
• a command vehicle
• 2 crew-welfare and equipment vehicles
• a 4×4 response vehicle
• First response medical kits
• Rescue and recovery kits

Training

Our training is provided by our own in-house training team, Lowland Rescue trainers, and Rescue 3 providers.