TEXSAR is honored to have received a generous contribution from the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF). The following article was written by Rich Gergasko, President & CEO of Texas Mutual Insurance Company and a member of the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation Texas/Southeast Division Board of Directors. IICF Campaign Helps Flood Recovery in Texas “During a time when Texans are typically gearing up to fend off the oncoming extreme heat, this year, much of the state experienced damaging storms, tornadoes and flooding. After...
September 22, 2015 For Immediate Release TEXSAR: Texas Search and Rescue Has Reached the GuideStar Gold Level Profile as a Demonstration of Its Commitment to Transparency Austin, Texas – TEXSAR: Texas Search and Rescue today achieved the Gold GuideStar Nonprofit Profile level. GuideStar is the world’s largest source of information about nonprofit organizations and a leader in advancing transparency in the nonprofit sector. This level demonstrates TEXSAR’s deep commitment to nonprofit transparency and accountability. “We have worked hard to showcase our progress toward our mission, and our long-held belief...
Texas Search and Rescue (TEXSAR) is saddened by the devastating floods that have impacted our state over the last two weeks. This tragic loss of life and property has shaken our local communities. TEXSAR deployed to the Blanco River floods in the early morning hours of Sunday May 24th, directly from another deployment located almost 250 miles away. The first morning our team was able to perform 37 water rescues in Martindale, Texas. Since that time, our team has spent...
Crystal Beach, TX Texas Search and Rescue (TEXSAR) deployed rescue swimmers, paramedics, fire fighters and support personnel over Memorial Day weekend to the Bolivar Peninsula. Over the holiday weekend, estimated crowds of 100,000 people overflowed onto the peninsula. Working at the request of the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management in support of the Crystal Beach Fire Department and the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office, TEXSAR members backed up emergency services on Crystal Beach deploying rescue boats and swimmers and utilized...
The First Annual TEXSAR Team Meeting and Training Weekend was held this past weekend on May 15, 16 and 17 at the beautiful LCRA Black Rock Park on Lake Buchanan. Over 50 TEXSAR Team Members from all across the state convened at the camp for a full weekend of classroom training, field training, water rescue training, food and fellowship. Training topics such as K9 searches, HAZMAT and WMD’s, K9 first aid and assisting individuals w/ disabilities were just a...
On Sunday, May 10th, 2015, at the request of the Texas Rangers and Bandera County Sheriff’s Office, several TEXSAR K9 handlers were pulled off of a local training exercise to conduct a spontaneous search for a man who was reported missing the prior month. The impromptu search was conducted after the man’s vehicle was located in the brush and swampy terrain of the Lake Medina lake bed not far from the training location. After a brief search, TEXSAR’s K9 team...
At approximately 5 a.m. on March 9, 2015, a missing 74 year old nursing home patient departed his home during a cold rain storm. Rockwall Police requested lost person behavior consulting and planning search planning assistance while TEXSAR ground and K9 assets were routed to the search area. A TEXSAR member who also works for the Rockwall Police Department conducted a hasty search and located the man deceased less than a mile away from the nursing home in thick brush. TEXSAR...
On October 18, 2014, at the request of the Wylie, Texas Police Department, TEXSAR was called to conduct a search for a missing Wylie-area nurse’s aid who was discovered missing after she did not appear at work. The search area was a three mile route she normally took between her home and work. After weeks of searching by local police and fire units, the TEXSAR Austin and Dallas Teams were called in and conducted a wide area land search. The...
Early in the morning on September 18 Senior Deputy Jessica Hollis of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office went missing in a flooded creek near Mansfield Dam. Over the next two days, members from over a dozen different agencies searched by ground, water, and air to find this missing deputy until the fallen deputy was located and recovered from Lake Austin. TEXSAR was honored to be one of the agencies called to participate in this search that leveraged every capability and every...
On Wednesday, August 27th, 2014, at the request of the Texas Rangers and in concert with Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office, several TEXSAR members deployed to assist the in the search for a woman missing since August 5th. While preparing to deploy ground search and K9 assets, TEXSAR’s air search assets began the search for the missing woman. After an approximate one hour search via TEXSAR helicopter, a person’s remains were located in dense brush just north of Bastrop. With no other...
