Considering health and safety
Page updated: 30 November 2020
If you're the Incident Controller, you need to consider the health and safety of everyone involved in a SAR operation.
Ensure appropriate health and safety systems are used
You need to ensure appropriate health and safety systems are used throughout the SAR operation. This includes the Conclusion stage and immediately afterwards.
As Incident Controller, you are responsible for the health and safety of everyone who participates in the SAR operation. If the SAR operation has significant risks, you can appoint one or more people to:
- monitor health and safety
- directly report health and safety issues to you.
Fatigue needs to be considered during and after an operation. Information on managing fatigue is provided in the Fatigue Guidance Note.
Understand the Health and Safety at Work Act
This act protects everyone involved in a SAR operation. This includes people who are paid employees and those acting on behalf of coordinating authorities as volunteers.
Be aware of each SAR agency’s health and safety policy
The service level agreements between SAR coordinating authorities and SAR partner agencies require:
- all SAR agencies to have their own health and safety policy
- all SAR resources to comply with their SAR agency’s health and safety policy.
The link below will take you to the page on the NZSAR website that contains all service level agreements with SAR partner agencies.
Help SAR resources to recover after the Conclusion stage
You can organise a place for SAR resources to:
- rest
- eat
- travel from
- receive appropriate support.
The resource below contains information supporting people who have been exposed to trauma.
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Dealing with exposure to traumaDate: 30/11/20 Type: pdf Size: 221 KB
Make sure SAR resources return to a safe place
Everyone involved in a SAR operation must return to a safe place. This could be:
- their home
- their workplace
- another agreed place.
Make sure SAR resources rest before travelling
People involved in a SAR operation should not travel immediately after the operation is concluded or suspended. They should rest and avoid travel until they recover from any physical or mental fatigue caused by their involvement in the SAR operation.