I hand over the front of the room to Aaron. I know that he and his new crew will continue to serve you well. I hope that we all continue to support and help them.

Here's to a great 2003 and (for the last time) Good searching and rescuing!

Boots and Blisters

by Aaron Hall, Training Officer

Its December now and only 1 training opportunity and 1 evaluation remain for the 2002. The training will cover Avalanche skills and will be held on Saturday, December 28th at the Tijeras Ranger Station. Watch the website and check the hotline for more information. This month's evaluation is Search Techniques and will be held on Saturday, December 14th at the Embudo trailhead at the east end of Indian School. As usual, the evaluation will begin at 9:00 am. Please call the hotline if you plan to attend. Also, please remember that because Search Techniques is a team evaluation, a minimum number of people are needed in order to conduct the evaluation. So even if you have already passed search techniques this year you are welcome to come and help your teammates pass. You won't get extra credit, but you will get the satisfaction of helping your team, and you will get some quality search techniques practice. Even though we don't do area searches on very many missions it's important to do area searches well when we are called to do them. Cibola is one of the best teams in New Mexico when it comes to critical separation area searches. This skill has been a real asset to Search and Rescue on a few recent missions and it's something that we can all be proud of. Our regular search techniques evaluations and your participation in them is the primary reason we stand out when it comes time to do an area search.

Looking back over the year, we have had 14 Evaluations and 20 Sanctioned Trainings. Training subjects have included: Winter skills, Mantracking, 4WD, Terrain Identification, GPS, a Mock Search, Low Angle Equipment and Rigging, a Summer Bivy, a Winter Bivy, and many others. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has pitched in and helped to conduct training or an evaluation. There is a lot more to Search and Rescue than missions and your hard work has helped make Cibola's training and evaluation program a reality. Once again, thanks and keep up the good work!

Business as Usual:Meeting Minutes

by Joyce Rumschlag, Secretary

Minutes of 14 of November, 2002 Business Meeting

Pre-meeting mini lesson was the viewing of medical tapes concerning Violent Patients and Burns and their Treatment.

President's Report

David Dixon called the meeting to order at 1930 with the introduction of officers and general membership. Brian Miner was attending his first meeting. Welcome! Old business was discussed in regard to following up with joining NASAR, and Tom Russo had purchased 3 tracker units.

Vice-President/Training

Aaron Hall reminded us about the man tracking and training mission in El Malpais. Search Techniques evaluation is on Saturday. Avalanche training will be held on Saturday December 28. There was a discussion regarding when the next training will be held and what the subject would be. No final decision was made, and the training will be announced on the hotline.

Treasurer

David Dixon reported on our financial status for Art Fischer.

Membership

David Dixon reported for Steve Buckley that we should all be monitoring ourselves to make sure that we have the required amount of trainings and evaluations.

Equipment

Tony Gaier bought two new radios that will be programmed and sent out in the field for members who do not have one of their own. Members can keep the radio for six months or longer if no new members require them.

Medical

Mike Dugger reported that David Chapek is not only an EMT but also a WEMT. Congratulations! We will be skipping the videos for the December meeting.

P.R. Committee

Frances Robertson needs help for the Children's Fair on Saturday from 0930 to 1115. She also passed around new hand outs that could cost from $0.17 to $0.20 each. It was decided by the membership that a revision was required, disclaimer added as well as a summary of who CSAR is. Good work, Frances!

New Business

The member guide will undergo one final revision. Thanks to Steve Buckley and the member guide committee for their work on this important task.

Voting for new officers will take place at the next meeting. President: Aaron Hall
Vice-President: Steve Buckley
Secretary: Joyce Rumschlag
Membership: David Chapek
Treasurer: Lili Ziesmann
Don't forget to vote.

Aaron Hall suggested that we rethink a policy that is keeping people out of the field. Training officers have too much to do and should be given credit for giving evaluations. A motion was made to shift responsibility for running evaluations from the Training Officer to the President. This motion carried unanimously. There was lengthy discussion about whether to encourage members to run evaluations by allowing evaluators to run two or more evaluations in lieu of taking the evaluation. There were several suggestions about how to manage that, but after lengthy discussion of the pros and cons the topic was tabled without a vote.

December 14 was suggested for the date for the Christmas party. Check the list serve and hot line for updates.

Meeting was adjourned at 2145.

Who's Who and New

by Steven Buckley, Membership Officer

Well, we have completed another year in SAR and I completed my term as your Membership Officer. First of all, let me thank you all for the opportunity to contribute to the team as one of your officers. Secondly, I would like to share some statistics with you. In January 2002 our Team had 28 people on it (members and prospective members). In December 2002 we have 29 people. As usual, statistics can be misleading. We will lose at least three members in January 2003 because they will have two training-deficient half years in a row. In all cases, these members were strong members that stopped participating in team functions. A resignation letter is a little cleaner, but failing to meet team standards will result in a status change from member to ex-member as well.

Let's look at how the team has changed over the last year. In January 2002 the team had 21 members and 7 prospective members. Of those members, 18 of the 21 are still members. Three members resigned. Of those prospective members, all 7 became members. One of those prospective members that became a member resigned in 2002.

We had 20 people provide contact information this year. Of this group, we picked up five prospective members. Of those five, two have become members and the other three are making great progress towards that goal.

O.K. time for a few metrics:
Member Retention: 21-(4 resignations)-(3 training losses) = 14; 67%
Prospective to Member Progression (Class of 2001): 7 for 7; 100%
Prospective to Member Progression (Class of 2002): 2 for 5; 40%
Recruiting (Prospective Members from First Contacts): 5 out of 20; 25%

In December of 2002 our team is composed of 23 solid members (not including 3 projected losses due to training) and 3 prospective members (all close to transitioning to member). Not bad and in-family with our membership statistics in the past.

I want to say a few things about our membership as I transition to other ways to contribute to the team. You have all heard me state that we are volunteers and that fact should be considered at all times. A volunteer is someone who freely gives something to others for a common good. In our case, we provide extensive personal outdoor expertise and a disciplined team architecture to provide SAR (specifically, search and litter services--our core competencies) to the New Mexico community. To provide this service, we endure family impacts (our significant others hear those mid-night phones calls too), physical challenges (dragging my carcass and a 25 lb rescue pack to the top of Bosque peak is tough at my age --- but it builds character), minor financial impact (they repay us for gas but all that gear and its upkeep is expensive), and some level of personal danger. In my mind, those who volunteer are a cut above those who don't. With that thought in mind, I would like to recognize those who served our team so well but have moved on to other challenges and ways to contribute. James Newberry, Andy Nielsen, Paul Dressendorfer, and Stephen Hochmann served our team well as volunteers. Thanks for your service, thanks for your superb contributions to the team, and best of luck in your future endeavors. You did great and helped make us strong.

On to another soapbox. You have also heard me say that I believe that SAR volunteers are in the same category as volunteer firefighters. The thing that makes this belief credible is our training and evaluation program. The trainings give us a structured forum to practice our skills as a team. Our evaluations demonstrate adequate proficiency to contribute to the team's mission. This team has done an outstanding job of participating in Cibola's training and evaluation program. Of course, Aaron Hall gets a big thank you for his tireless execution of the training and evaluation program. Great job Aaron! The volunteer trainers and evaluators that supported Aaron also deserve a big thank you as well (we are looking for volunteers for next year--hint, hint). Great job! Finally, the members who managed their individual training and evaluation requirements well (saving the officers from having to pull out the old E-mail cattle prod), thanks. The training program allows us to converge as a team. The evaluation program gives us the credentials to justify our team status to any external observer. Let's continue this trend and crank our training and evaluation programs next year as well.

To all of my SAR comrades, have a safe and happy holiday. See you on missions.

Web News

by Tom Russo

Some of you have noticed, but I have done little work on the website in the last few months. I am still planning a complete rewrite of every single database program, and am well on the way to getting a clean, modern set of perl scripts that do everything the old ones did, I'm just moving very slowly right now. The training and mission database access scripts are done, the member information scripts are mostly done, and I've finally started on the certification database scripts. Still to go are the medical provider database (it was only a prototype the first time I wrote it, and this is my chance to get it right), a complete rewrite of the calendar database, and lastly a complete rewrite of all the programs that are used to generate this newsletter. Those have been a source of many headaches over the years, and I'm looking forward to not having different headaches over the coming years.

The team website can be accessed at http://www.cibolasar.org/

Disclaimer and Copyright notice

the Editors

The contents of this newsletter are copyright © 2002 by their respective authors or by Cibola Search and Rescue, Inc., and individual articles represent the opinions of the author. Cibola SAR makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in these articles, and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. Articles contained in this newsletter may be reproduced, with attribution given to Cibola SAR and the author, by any member of the Search and Rescue community for use in other team's publications.