The mayor of Essex is pushing for a local Ontario Search and Rescue chapter.
Sherry Bondy raised a minor but urgent matter during Monday's council meeting asking that a letter of support be sent immediately to the Ontario Search and Rescue Volunteer Association to see a local chapter created.
Bondy says this chapter would include Windsor and all of Essex County.
She says there are too many people who are missing locally, and this team would assist in trying to locate them.
The closest Ontario Search and Rescue Volunteer chapter is in London.
Each chapter is comprised of highly trained, unpaid professionals who assist police in their efforts to local lost persons. Each volunteer must go through basic courses of map and compass navigation, clue detection and awareness, search patterns, and more.
Bondy says while London isn't far, it would be beneficial to have a local chapter.
"They can have volunteers that are ready and trained so that when something happens we don't have to wait for travel time. We know if children go missing, if they wander off into a forest, or a farm field, we want to make sure that people are here to find them."
She says this is a more urgent matter.
"If we are going to do this, let's hurry up and do it now because we don't know if somebody could go missing tomorrow. We do know that there are people missing right now in our community, and one missing person is one too many. And so, Heaven forbid that we get more missing, I want to make sure that we can get these volunteers."
Bondy says she'd like to see a local chapter created as soon as possible.
"We know that they could even have volunteers that are ready now, some of the things they do: first aid, CPR, wilderness evacuation. So it's a really great group of skills that they will bring to the community, and also train the volunteers here."
The Ontario Search and Rescue needs a letter of support from each participating municipality in order to start a local chapter.
The Essex County OPP Detachment Board - North also sent a letter of support during their meeting on Monday morning.
The Ontario Search and Rescue Volunteer Association was established in 1998 and is a provincially recognized, not-for-profit, volunteer based organization.