SBC Search and Rescue

Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue (SBCSAR), established decades ago by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department to provide vital emergency search and rescue services for Santa Barbara County and surrounding areas, is an important first responder team for the community. The all-volunteer group of dedicated and highly trained search and rescue professionals is committed to providing critical assistance and support during any search and rescue operation. SBCSAR is capable of a wide range of search and rescue services, including search techniques, medical response, high-angle rescue, swiftwater rescue, and avalanche rescue. 

Volunteers with SBCSAR are expected to be ready to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The team members are rigorously trained and physically fit, able to travel through a mountain environment in any weather for extended periods of time to offer skilled and compassionate assistance to those in distress. Since its inception, SBCSAR’s volunteers have spent thousands of hours honing their skills in all areas of rescue procedure.

That came in handy for many of the 22 “callouts” responded to by SBCSAR through mid-March this year, tasks which included conducting mandatory evacuations during the flooding, finding and assisting lost and injured hikers, locating and evacuating a paraglider in distress, and making sure worryingly overdue bike riders returned home safely. 

But SBCSAR was also instrumental in 16 other rescue scenarios over a single Saturday earlier this month. If that sounds like a dire local story you’re surprised at not having heard about by now, don’t worry that you missed the news: The scenarios were part of the Mountain Rescue Association’s annual reaccreditation event, hosted for the first time by Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue at the home base of Live Oak campground. The organization hosted 16 Southern California search and rescue teams whose turn it was to undergo re-evaluations in three critical areas of Search and Tracking, Technical Rock, and Snow and Ice. 

In the event, host SBCSAR created simulated search operations involving a missing individual. The teams had to interview witnesses and reporting parties, form teams, develop plans, and deploy to locate and follow tracks. After locating the missing subject, team members conducted a full medical assessment, treated the subject’s “injuries,” and performed an extraction.

“We hosted 250 people from as far south as San Diego, and as far east as Inyo,” said Jennifer Beyer, SBCSAR rescue member and incident commander who runs the development committee. “We laid out the 16 different trails each with a different subject and medical scenario, spread out over the northern part of Santa Barbara County, the Santa Ynez Valley and the southern part of Santa Barbara’s front country. We had a Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue person attend to support the teams, and different members doing the command and the communication so everybody could talk to one another in the backcountry. It was six months of planning and organization to get all this up and running and done.” 

The weekend was not only a testament to SBCSAR’s ability to creatively host and challenge the 16 teams, but also an opportunity to observe everyone in action to enhance the organization’s own skills in providing its essential services. 

“We got to see their tools, their equipment, their command posts, their trucks, how they set things up, how they plan, all of that,” Beyer said. “It’s a great exchange of knowledge. We saw how they deployed their teams, how they structured a rescue and the search itself – the things they looked for, what they chose to do first, how they did their medical assessment? There are some very, very strong teams from Southern California, so picking their brains is amazing for us. And I am always looking ahead for what new equipment might be coming out to make things lighter, faster, or more durable.”

In addition to its never-ending learning, SBCSAR also spends a lot of its energy educating the community on how to be safe when they’re exploring nature in the great outdoors, particularly in less densely populated areas. The organization provides training in navigation, communication, and those survival skills relevant to the challenging and dynamic mountain environments of Santa Barbara County.

But when people get in trouble anyway, SBCSAR’s professionals are always at the ready. One of this year’s more high-profile rescues involved an experienced paraglider who had an issue and knew he was going to crash and ended up injured off the trail. 

“We worked with the Montecito Fire Department, locating him through only his phone with GPS coordinates, and then stabilizing his injuries when we got there,” Beyer said. “Then we helped evacuate him using a stretcher and a wheel before he was eventually taken by helicopter out to the hospital.”

A more mundane if much more typical rescue also took place in Montecito a few days after the Mountain Rescue Association event, Beyer said. 

“There was an individual who went up to the three pools in the hiking trail in the hills and ended up enjoying his stay longer than he should have,” she said. “He didn’t have a light or a jacket, and when it got dark and he tried to find his way out, he couldn’t. So he called 911 at 11:55 pm and we had 12 responding members who made quick work of it. They accessed the trail, found him via GPS, hiked up, retrieved him, put him in warm clothing and walked him out. It was pretty remarkable.”

The rescue was provided at absolutely no cost to the “pool” man, just like every other service provided by SBCSAR – which not all community members realize. Such was the case when one of the team members was hiking Rattlesnake Canyon for fun earlier this year, and encountered a couple hiking back down, one of whom had an obvious knee injury.

“They were trying to self-extricate because she didn’t want to get charged for rescue, and she looked like she was in quite a bit of pain and struggling,” explained Jason Copus, SBCSAR’s Public Relations and Marketing Chair. “Our team member was wearing one of our foundation hats and he told them there’s no charge to be rescued. You don’t want to get injured any worse. Just call 911 and our team will come and assist you and take you down. “ 

While the rescues are provided at no cost and everybody is a volunteer, running the organization isn’t free. SBCSAR is 100% self-funded and relies on generous donations from individuals and corporate sponsors to meet its operational needs, funds that also support continued team training, rescue equipment, and technology.  

To help support SBCSAR or learn more about the organization, visit www.sbcsar.org