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ABOUT

TECHNICAL RESCUE magazine was first published in 1993  and has been the premier publication for rescue personnel worldwide ever since. In recent years we've added ARBCLIMBER magazine because a lot of us have past or current arborist backgrounds and the industry has now come around completely to similar technical hardware and ropes. WILDERNESS SAR started life as PARKRANGER but this name didn't capture the key target readership of mountain and cave rescue, search dogs, saerch helicopters and general Search & Rescue.  This has been separated out from TECHNICAL RESCUE to enable that publication to concentrate on the 'heavier' rescues in urban-industrial areas and transport networks. 

 

We concentrate on equipment and techniques in a no-nonsense, informal but technically detailed style leaving the politics, procedures and topical stuff to the other magazines in the fire and/or rescue sector. Editorial is independent and originally drew on the experience of a team from around the world that has hundreds of years of operations between them. Our UK team were all members of the UK's original  TECHNICAL RESCUE UNIT headed up by Ade Scott before the standardisation of all Fire Services post-9.11 under the USAR umbrella after which Unit personnel returned to posts in various services from Fire-Rescue/Fire-USAR and Ambulance HART, Coastguard, RNLI, Police, military and Mines Rescue. We've lost a few on the way - Firefighter and caving specialist Alan Bannon was tragically killed in a high rise fire in 2010 and our water rescue guru Jim Segerstrom, co-inventor of the term 'Swiftwater-Rescue' died of a stroke in 2007. Both are sadly missed.  

 

Our current editorial team includes;

  • the man-mountain of Rope Rescue Reed Thorne from Arizona 

  • Veteran firefighter Adam Jones, rescuer, surfer, climber and arborist and one of the finest problem-solvers we've ever had in our midst.

  • Jim's co-founder and co-father of swiftwater rescue Dr Mike Croslin still fighting the cause from California

  • veteran ex-London Fire Brigade extrication instructors Rich Denham and Nick Appleton who remains a London instructor in extrication and water rescue

  • UK Coastguard's head of Technical Rescue, lifeguard and ex-Arb Officer Rich Hackwell, giving us rope rescue,mud-rescue, marine rescue, lifeguarding  and arb stuff

  • World champion extrication medic James Hutchen who also covers us for arb and military stuff

  • Another World Champion Medic and firefighter Gary Cross is also a water rescue instructor, Co-Responder, Coastguard and halloween fetishist keeping us on our toes as our top researcher.

  • Ex-RNLI special crafts instructor and full time cox on the London RNLI Lifeboat is Chris Walker now relocated back to Scotland for some unfathomable reason and joining him in the cold, dark north is...

  • Ex London Firefighter Darryl Ashford Smith is now with Scottish Mountain Rescue as well as a key part of the new Technical Rescue organisation so while he still covers technical rescue for us he is now primarily a stalwart of Wilderness SAR magazine  

  • Considerably more glamorous than Chris and Darryl is  Shawn Alladio of K38 in California, probably the world's leading expert in PWC/RWCs especially in the marine environment

  • Mines Rescue specialist Brian Robinson gives us confined space rescue when he's not jetting off around the world working in other mines

  • Our old stomping ground in South Africa is still represented by mountain rescue and heli-rescue veteran Rob Thomas

  • and on the frontline in KwaZulu Natal is paramedic Steve Daly the only one of our long list of colleagues still operating there

  • Back in the States, our previous water rescue contributor Fire Chief Ben Waller of Hilton Head Island in Georgia is now retired and our previous SAR editor, Park Ranger Lee Lang who used to be found in Colorado with the Larimer County Rescue team is currently a Park Ranger stationed in the middle of nowhere in California.

More recently we've been joined by:

  • Police Rescue veteran Roland Curll from NSW Australia specialising in wilderness SAR, rope rescue and tactical operations

  • Rock and tree climber and mountaineer Charlotte Ina-Sterland in the UK

  • getting too-long-in-the-tooth for this @#*t - veteran arborist TC Mazar in the US 

We are also extremely grateful for regular input from top US arborist and standards committee member Chris Girard and extrication instructor and expert in agricultural rescue Eric Rickenback of Pennsylvania​

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