Marion County Search and Rescue volunteers spent a Saturday in February familiarizing themselves with the Northwest part of Marion County. The training focused on area familiarization, GPS navigation, mapping, SARTopo (electronic mapping), driving, radio communications, clue awareness, problem solving, and team building skills.

Seven SAR teams deployed from the St. Louis Ponds County Park to more than a dozen geocache points around Northwest Marion County. The geocaches were designed to get SAR members to uses problem solving and clue awareness skills in order to find what they were looking for. Teams were sent to various points of interest including city landmarks in St. Paul, Donald, Butteville, and West Woodburn. Some points of interest included water treatment facilities, historic buildings, cemeteries, and city parks.

SAR Incident Command (located at St. Louis Ponds) had the opportunity to interact with several members of the public and share information about SAR training and operations throughout the County. In all, this was a very productive training spanning many skills sets.