North Shore Rescue was searching for a few good volunteers – and they found more than they needed.
Coming off its busiest rescue season ever in 2015, the team wanted to add some more boots on the ground so it recently held a new recruit drive, which ended Friday. More than 100 applications were submitted.
“There’s always been a lot of interest in joining the team,” said North Shore Rescue leader Mike Danks. “We felt confident that we would get applications but we didn’t realize we’d get as many as we did. So we’re really excited about bringing some new people on and increasing the strength of the team.”
Danks said applicants were both male and female and backgrounds ranged from firefighters, paramedics and ski patrollers to business people and other professionals.
“It’s a broad range for sure, which is good because we want a diverse group,” said Danks. “And the calibre of a lot of the applications is very high as well.”
Currently the team has around 40 members who volunteer approximately 250 hours a year.
Danks said the new members will be looked upon to be active field members and also be part of the caretaker group that conducts maintenance at North Shore Rescue’s facilities.
On Friday, the organization’s membership committee culled through the stack of applicants to select a group of 17 for an orientation hike Sunday at Lynn Headwaters Regional Park up to Third Debris Torrent, where the team stores a cache of equipment.
“It’s a very basic hike but about a quarter of the way up it basically turned to solid ice. It was actually quite treacherous if you didn’t have microspikes or something with you like a ski pole,” he said. “It worked out very well. We divided up the equipment we had to make it safe for everybody. It’s a really, really good group of people and it’s going to be a hard decision to narrow it down to four to six people.
After Sunday’s hike Danks said 12 of the applicants will sit down for a round of interviews to select the new members.
