KINGWOOD — The Preston County Commission will vote next week about whether to provide $1,200 to the Mountaineer Area Rescue Group (MARG).
The group wants the money in order to provide training for three members of the drone team.
Drone Team Coordinator Bill Rose spoke to the commission during this week’s meeting about the team. Rose said the all-volunteer, nonprofit search and rescue organization was founded in Kingwood in 1990. He said the group has 79 call-out qualified members, most of whom live in Preston or Monongalia County.
“We have various subgroups of specialists within our group,” he said, “including K-9 teams, man-trackers, ground searchers, rope rescue specialists, emergency medical responders and the drone team.”
Rose said the group doesn’t charge for its services, and members are not reimbursed for their time or the gasoline used to get to a search. He said the team only responds to requests made by law enforcement, fire departments and emergency management. Rose said the team is dispatched by Preston County 911 and Mon County 911.
“Most of our searches are for children, the elderly, often with dementia, as well as hikers, bikers, runaways and hunters.” he said.
Rose said some examples of call outs include last November when the team was called out and ended up flying its drone over a pond in Hazleton to photograph a car in the water for local law enforcement.
“Just recently on July 3, we responded to a search for a man missing in Big Bear Lake Campground. We were assisting Preston County deputies and Preston County OEM, he said. “On July 5, we responded to Burton in western Mon County and our team found the missing elderly gentleman.”
Rose said another example was a call out for a missing teenager in Reedsville. He said it was 3 a.m. Feb. 4 and the temperature was 26 degrees.
Rose said the drone used by the group cost $6,500, and was purchased through donations. He said a local coal mine provided half the funding and one of the MARG members donated the other half in memory of her mother who had died.
“We have four FFA-certified drone pilots and 29 drone support staff, but none of our pilots have had formal training on how to most effectively deploy the drone for search and rescue scenarios,” Rose said. “We would like to participate
in the upcoming 16-hour drone search and rescue course in October sponsored by Public Safety USA and the Preston County OEM, but hesitate expecting our volunteers to personally pay $400 each for the course. Thus, we would be very grateful if the commission would consider sponsoring a few of our drone team members for this course.”
Commission President Don Smith told Rose since he was not on the agenda they couldn’t vote this week. However, he asked him to come to Monday’s meeting and commissioners would formally vote on his request.
The next meeting of the Preston County Commission will be 9:30 a.m. Monday.
