The latest beneficiary of the skills of the Park County Search and Rescue team was the Shoshone River, as discarded culverts were cleared from the North Fork.
The Park County Sheriff’s office released the details of Search and Rescue’s latest mission. It involved community clean-up rather than citizen safety but is no less valuable.
On Thursday, May 6, several members of the P.C.S.A.R. participated in a river clean-up in an area of the North Fork of the Shoshone Riverbank, between the Wapiti Ranger Station and the Bill Cody Ranch. Two large culverts were lodged in the river rapids.
Park County Sheriff Scott Steward reached out to the United States Forest Service District Ranger. He offered the team’s assistance – and his personal raft – to help clear the culverts.
Sheriff Steward, P.C.S.A.R. Coordinator Bill Brown, and five other team members set out to get the culverts out of the river.
The first culvert was quickly and successfully removed. Meanwhile, the second culvert remains thoroughly stuck in the river.
The second culvert is too large and filled with sand, making it impossible for the team to remove. But nobody is giving up. The current plan is to make another attempt to remove it in the fall after the river’s water level goes down.
During the mission, the team located other trash and debris in the area. All of it was removed during the same operation.
So why was P.C.S.A.R.’s assistance so crucial for this community clean-up? Water safety.
“The water expertise of these volunteers was necessary for the safe removal of this culvert,” the Park County Sheriff’s Office said in a release. “As seen in the pictures, it had to be carried downstream for a reliable landing area. While this did provide an excellent training opportunity for the five members and their coordinator, it also allowed them to further aid Park County.”
P.C.S.A.R. volunteers regularly undergo training exercises to keep prepared for the myriad of potential calls they could receive in northwest Wyoming. The latest training saw them practicing an evacuation of grizzly-injured hikers while simultaneously saving victims trapped in the Buffalo Bill Reservoir.
“These amazing volunteers are dedicated to the service of Park County and can be counted on in situations both great and small,” the Sheriff’s Office says.
