PSARC is moving closer to becoming an operational entity that can provide resources when requested by an incident Responsible Authority.  This is a significant move from being a group that sets training and operational standards for the independent SAR teams in the Commonwealth. 

As part of this move, PSARC has defined requirements for team membership in the Council (see the Membership page). This membership is dependent on teams training to specific certification standards.    PSARC has also defined a set of team operational levels.  These levels are defined here.  The PSARC teams that have been inspected to specific levels can be found here.  The PSARC Operations Committee maintains a section of the website with team training requirements and related information.

PSARC has also established relationships with other State organization that allow the organizations to support each other in their missions.  The first of these agreements was with the Pennsylvania Wing of the Civil Air Patrol.  This agreement provides for joint notification of CAP & PSARC missions.

The final piece in making PSARC operational is the ability to provide a service to Responsible Agencies for dispatching trained and certified teams to a lost person incident.  The current dispatch procedures for PSARC fill this need.

The Council has a very active Operations Committee that is responsible for proposing training and operational standards and SOGs.   This committee maintains databases of team information on a PSARC Yahoo Group.   For information about how to become a member of this group, please email the Operations Chair.