Search and Rescue Technicians and the Para Rescue Association of Canada

The Search and Rescue Technician (SAR TECH) is part of a group of elite, highly trained rescue specialists who provide on-scene medical aid and extraction from some of the harshest and most remote areas of Canada. They are military aircrew who deploy from rotary or fixed wing aircraft in any environment or climactic condition. They will locate and penetrate the site, and treat and evacuate causalities. SAR operations may require parachuting, mountaineering, hiking, swimming, and scuba diving. Sometimes these operations are conducted in adverse conditions.

SAR TECHs generally work in teams of two and operate under all Canadian climatic (high altitude and arctic) and terrain (land, sea, air) conditions. On any given day, the SAR TECHs could find themselves 200 miles out to sea, hoisting a casualty off a sailboat, parachuting at night into the high arctic to save a stranded individual, rescuing a fisherman in an overturned fishing boat, clinging perilously close to the edge of a glacial crevasse, or coordinating a mountain rescue of a fallen climber.