By JOHN K. WILEY
The Associated Press
PRIEST LAKE, Idaho - The three Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were following tracks across the border into northern Idaho when their snowmobiles got bogged down in deep powder snow.
The trail became so narrow and the snow so deep that the Mounties had to physically lift their machines to turn them around. Other officers, from both Canada and the United States, struggled to make their way to the trapped Mounties.
Communications were spotty. Two-way radios didn’t work, and cellular phone use was limited by weather and satellite coverage.
“We learned many things that day; that being unprepared for anything, anywhere, is not acceptable,” one of the trapped Mounties, Constable Kim Bloy, said Wednesday.
Their 12-hour ordeal in November inspired a new training course to teach survival skills to officers who work the mountainous border regions between the United States and Canada. Steve Tomson, a former sheriff who is coordinating the course, said an increasing number of officers patrol the border now because of concerns including terrorism.
“The biggest challenge is working safely in the natural environment. If not properly clothed and equipped, an officer can become a casualty quicker to hypothermia than to terrorists,” Tomson said. “Not everybody’s an outdoorsman.”
The winter skills course, which will be offered next winter, is the first of its kind for border workers, said U.S. Attorney Jim McDevitt of Spokane, Washington, whose office prosecutes many of the federal smuggling, illegal entry and money laundering cases in the U.S. state.
Medical training will be a large part of the classes, along with compass and map skills, avalanche safety, wilderness survival techniques and appropriate clothing and gear, Tomson said. The courses, to be taught about twice a year, also include anti-terrorism tactics and techniques to catch smugglers and illegal immigrants moving through the vast expanses near the border.
“We want to teach the average patrol officer how to survive,” Tomson said.
About a dozen officers from federal, state, provincial and local agencies in the United States and Canada are organizing the courses. Bloy, the Mountie, is among them.
The organizers are part of the Okanogan Integrated Border Enforcement Team responsible for the stretch from the crest of the Cascade Range in Washington to Glacier Park in Montana. It is one of 14 such teams of Canadian and U.S. law-enforcement agencies covering the border from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
The sessions are being paid with federal law enforcement funds, while individual agencies pay for food, lodging and other expenses for participants.
“We hope that by this training, officers who go through the course will be in a position to help people, rather than become victims themselves in the woods,” said U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Mike Bonszano, who will help teach the courses.
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On the Net:
Homeland Security Department: www.dhs.gov
Royal Canadian Mounted Police: www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/index_e.htm