Illinois Search Dogs and the McLean County Emergency Management Agency are excited to announce a new collaborative partnership. Effective August 1, 2011, the operational aspects of Illinois Search Dogs (ISD) will become part of McLean County Emergency Management Agency (EMA).

What does this mean to the emergency response community?
McLean County EMA will now be offering an expanded menu of core emergency response services to include:

• Search and Rescue including both ground search teams & nationally certified K9 teams (including K9s for cases involving land/water cadaver, disaster, area searches, and *trailing), above-water recovery, search management & search planning. (*trailing K9s are not utilized to search for criminal suspects, only missing persons)
• Managed Incident Communications
• Mass Casualty Incident Support
• Severe Storm Operations
• Damage Assessment
• Winter Weather Operations
• Supplemental Lighting and Power

This expanded menu of services reflects combining two well-established and professional resources into a single, more effective resource. This exciting collaboration will provide an even better level and scope of services to the emergency response community.

The new, comprehensive search and rescue service will respond to direct requests from agencies and mutual aid requests throughout Illinois and out of state via EMAC. Requesting agencies will retain the privilege of identifying specific search and rescue capabilities and resources needed for deployment.

For additional information, please view the entire press release by clicking here.