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Northland Land Search and Rescue [NLSAR] is a professional unpaid, not for profit, volunteer based group that provides specialist cliff face rescue and cave rescue teams who cover all of the Northland area, which stretches from Kaiwaka in the south to North Cape at the top of New Zealand, and provides a land search and rescue capability for the Lower Northland Police Area for all SAR Op’s within the Whangarei, Kaipara districts. NLSAR also provides additional Resources for Far North LSAR Group who attend Land/Bush Operation’s in Far North Police Area.

Northland Search and Rescue Cliff/Cave Rescue Team recently attended a Search and Rescue Institute New Zealand Vertical Rope Rescue course. This course is working towards a nationally recognized standard across technical rescue teams in the New Zealand Land SAR sector.

Cape Brett Challenge (Weekend) – April 2009 by Dave Yeo.

The end of the working week was going to be a busy one with all of us meeting at Jenny’s house to head north for our day of making sure people were safe. I was told there was a runner down. A decision was made to call in NEST (‘Northland Emergency Services Trust’ Rescue Helicopter).

Landsar CEO Hyden SMITH visit to Whangarei confirmed for Thursday 19th March. There is a general meeting for all Northland and Far North land search and rescue members to attend. North Island field officer Ian Newman is also visiting with Hyden.

Northland SAR has decided to implement a WEB2SMS system for improving response times, communication and generally making life easier in the Northland land search and rescue scene.

This system allows us to login to a web site and send one message to everyone cellphone at once, this greatly reducing our call out time, and the time (sometimes up to 20 minutes), some of us spend phoning people.

99% of our members now have and/or carry a cellular phone around with them most of the time.

It was decided it was more cost effective to move to a cell-phone based system as opposed to going to a pager system which then meant similar cost, and another piece of equipment to maintain and carry.

Another great weekend out at Waipu caves for the annual caving trip. The team was made up mostly of Auckland SAR, Northland SAR and a few extras that came along for the weekend.

Only 406MHz distress beacons will be monitored by satellite from 1st Feb 2009.

How will a 406MHz distress beacon help save your life?

* Only 406MHz distress beacons will be monitored by satellite from Feb 1.
* It’s faster. Once activated, the signal from a 406MHz distress beacon is picked up almost instantly by satellite.

The satellites supporting the old 121.5MHz and 243MHz distress beacons could take several hours to determine your location in some cases hours too late.

– NZ Police,
– NZ Land Search and Rescue,
– Maritime NZ Search & Rescue

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