"Back in my era, SARA was one team. What is this "five teams" you refer to?
My mistake. I googled SARA and got the website of
SARCI (of which SARA is one of 5 member teams). No sure how many members SARA has these days? I strongly suspect it is somewhat bigger than the team from Sublette Co, WY?
The population of Tucson was well below a million then, as well.
According to
Wikipedia "....the 2015 estimated population of the entire Tucson metropolitan statistical area (MSA) was 980,263. The Tucson MSA forms part of the larger Tucson-Nogales combined statistical area (CSA), with a total population of 1,010,025 as of the 2010 Census." By any measure, a much larger population base from which to draw volunteers than Sublette County, WY.
Phrases like "volunteer based, patchwork" and contrasts with " professional, full time teams" does not put volunteerism in the best light. I would say the article degrades volunteerism and volunteers, implying that they are a less than satisfactory solution. That is not to say the situation could not be improved
I certainly didn't get that negative sense from the article. Note that the article mentioned that the volunteers "...pour their own money into equipment and training..."
The articles also states that the NPS handles SAR in the parks. They do, mostly by calling on those pesky volunteers.
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There are parks like Yosemite, and Grand Canyon, with heavy visitation that do indeed have functional teams, but they all are willing to include volunteers with special insights and skills.
Denali also has a paid NPS professional team of climbing rangers. They also include highly skilled, carefully selected volunteers in their high altitude team. Denali frequently calls out volunteer teams for lowland SAR missions.
In my experience the biggest difference in SAR missions in the National Parks is in the consistent leadership and management the Park Service provides, and the additional resources that the NPS can quickly call upon (helicopters, rangers from other parks, etc).
As the article notes, outside the parks, in most states SAR is the legal responsibility of the local county sheriff. Some of those sheriff departments are are extremely knowledgeable about SAR, and can provide their local volunteer teams with good leadership and support (financial and otherwise). I've met some of the sheriff deputies in charge of SAR from Coconino Co, AZ, and they were first rate. However, other county sheriffs departments in some states are not so knowledgeable and are very poorly funded. And SAR missions often straddle county lines. There are horror stories about missions gone bad because of turf battles between adjacent counties.
My main point is that you always seem to fall back on your Arizona experience, and extrapolate that to all of North America. From what I've seen, Arizona does a very good job of SAR. I've taken some great training courses that have come out of Arizona. However, it is a big country, and not every volunteer SAR team has the resources and support that you have in AZ.
Don't assume everyplace handles SAR as well as Tucson.
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