Chaverim of Rockland County Set Out on Weekly Hikes to Train for Search-and-Rescue Missions

By Yehudit Garmaise

Chaverim of Rockland County took 16 of its volunteers on a two-hour hike up a hill in the woods last Sunday to provide training for finding lost people in search-and-rescue missions.

The sun shone on Sunday, which was a beautiful autumn day, however, when the Chaverim volunteers schedule a hike, they go out rain or shine, hot or cold: so they are prepared for anything when real emergency calls come in throughout the year. 

Chaverim’s search-and-rescue training involves survival skills, such as how to make fires, how to create shelter, and how to read maps in the woods, where wi-fi is non-existent. 

If phones can be used, hiking apps can help with navigation, explained Yossi Margareten, a Chaverim coordinator who lives in Ramapo.

“If I send you in, I have to be comfortable that you are coming out,” said Margareten, who added that volunteers are also provided with emergency medical training, such as how to treat fractures, perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and how to use medical equipment.

On Sunday, the volunteers took time out of their busy lives to learn how to use a lightweight, special stretcher that transports hikers who get injured.

“When people get injured while they are climbing, they call the Hatzolah to rescue them, but the Hatzolah volunteers are trained medically, and they don’t know how to go up the hills or where to go,” Maregareten said. “So Hatzolah calls us to get its volunteer to the locations of the injured people, and we bring them out to the ambulance.”

Chaverim also works closely with NY state park police officers when they call. 

Not only sticking close to home, the Chaverim volunteers set out in training hikes in all of the woods that surround Rockland County and in some parks in New Jersey, so the participants are ready for any mission.

“We need our volunteers to be familiar with any of the areas to which we will be sent, so that when we send them in, they know exactly where they are going,” Margareten explained. “They need to know the woods by heart.”

The volunteers also have to be trained as detectives-of-sorts to be armed with the questions that can best help them to find lost children and adults.

The weekly hikes training hikes are fun, Margareten said, but to rescue lost hikers, the volunteers have take their fitness levels seriously.

“Our volunteers have to be in shape,” Margareten said. “You have to be able to climb up hills, and if you can’t breathe, we can’t have you join us because you are going to slow down the entire search team. 

“We don’t have time to wait for you when we are on a mission.”

“When we get a call, we drop what we are doing, and we go. We have to time to waste.”