The expanded operating base of the Owaka branch of Catlins Land Search and Rescue is nearing completion. And the LandSAR crew is hosting an open day to showcase the functional facility's ''value for money and what benefit we are to the community'', chairman Fraser Morris says.
A new $150,000 search and rescue forward command unit that is expected to save lives across North Otago was officially revealed to the public at the weekend.
Assessor Lance Nicholas (left) poses with the winners of the 2013 Tautuku Cup for land-based search and rescue, a Dunedin LandSAR team made up of (from second left) Nick Wells, Dave Robertson, Juliette Parsons, Shanna Clyne, Stefan Prost, John Gilbert and Sonia Evers (front), on Stewart Island at the weekend.
The Southern region has cost the New Zealand Police and outside resources more than any other province for search and rescue operations in the past financial year.
Two teams of the country's top rescue trackers headed into the hills around Dunedin yesterday as part of what is believed to be the first competition of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
A search and rescue operation on hills near Dunedin on Saturday ended with the arrest of the search subject.
Raising efforts to provide North Otago Search and Rescue with a new forward command unit this week reached the halfway point, despite the Waitaki District Council's refusal to contribute financially towards the purchase.
The week-long extensive search for missing Dunedin man David Palmer has highlighted the need for a new command unit for North Otago Search and Rescue, a $150,000 project started last year, the organisation's vice-chairman says.
In the wake of the two recent fatalities in Mt Aspiring National Park, national volunteer search and rescue organisation LandSAR New Zealand is urging trampers, hunters and climbers going into the back country this summer to do all they can to help rescuers find them in an emergency.
Search and rescue teams were called to two separate events in North Otago on Wednesday night.
"Reluctant heroes" Lionel Clay and Davie Robinson, of Wanaka, have received national recognition for their part in a search and rescue operation in April.
The "unofficial chairman" of Omarama-based Waitaki Search and Rescue last year stole equipment from the organisation, then made a false insurance claim for the property.
The work of Central Otago Search and Rescue has just become easier, thanks to a grant enabling it to purchase 10 new radio harnesses required for field work.
Rescuers looking for a Norwegian yacht with a crew of three missing in the freezing waters of the Ross Sea in the Antarctic had their hopes raised then swiftly dashed today when they found a liferaft.
The number of police-led search and rescue operations in the Southern police district increased 20% last year.
Two helicopters were used yesterday to pick up an ill man in his 80s from the cruise ship Silver Shadow, in the Tasman Sea.
As Jinney Neale clung barefoot to rocks with a 5m swell lashing around her, Te Anau search and rescue member Stewart Burnby feared she would die.
A joint training exercise heralding closer ties between Queenstown Coastguard and commercial operators on Lake Wakatipu - prompted by the deaths of French kayakers Yoann Firdion (24) and Raphael Soubrier (21) earlier this month - was held in the resort last night.
Last week's double kayaking death on Lake Wakatipu has prompted closer, more formalised ties between Queenstown's Coastguard and commercial boat operators after two meetings earlier this week.
About 60 emergency services personnel from Queenstown, Wanaka and Clyde, along with Rescue Co-ordination Centre staff from Wellington, will take part in a full-scale search and rescue exercise (sarex) in the Wakatipu today.
