Awards Committee
The Awards Committee was established to review on an annual basis,
candidates for the:
Lisa Hannon Award
SAR Team Awards, and
Other special awards as determined by the Council
Committee chair:
Bryan Saunders
Lisa Hannon Award
This award is in memory of Lisa Hannon, a former
Incident Commander who died while en-route home after a mission. See
below for more information about Lisa.
The award is to recognize an outstanding SAR
member who:
-
Actively participates
in Search and Rescue, especially by responding to missions
-
Has built bridges among
SAR teams
-
Displays the qualities
of Lisa – optimistic, professional, always a kind word for everyone,
serious, enthusiastic about SAR, significant life achievements
Who was Lisa Hannon?
Lisa attended the University of Virginia where she majored in
international relations and English literature. While in college, she
joined the Blue Ridge Mountain Rescue Group, a member group of the
Appalachian Search and Rescue Conference (ASRC), where she served as the
equipment officer, incident staff training officer, ASRC Board of
Directors representative and preventative search officer, which included
her active involvement in coordinating the Hug-A-Tree program that
teaches children how to survive and be found if lost in the woods. Operationally,
Lisa rose through the field and management ranks to become an ASRC and
VA state incident commander, the highest certification possible in the
ASRC and VA state search and rescue program. She was one of two female
ICs in the ASRC at the time. She was a certified VA emergency medical
technician and member of the Scottsville, Virginia, Rescue Squad,
serving on a regular weekday night crew. Lisa graduated UVA in December
1993 and began working part-time while looking for a job in the area of
international aid and development. During the Spring of 1994, she
trained and was certified in April as an Outward Bound instructor in
order to fine tune her group leadership and mentoring skills and help
others through outdoor experiential education.
On Monday May 2, 1994, the West Virginia State Police called the
Virginia Department of Emergency Services to request assistance with a
3-day old massive search for a five-year-old boy, Victor Shoemaker, lost
in the mountains of Hampshire Country near the town of Kirby. Lisa
responded as the initial IC for Virginia and the state liaison for all
VA SAR resources. She was to be the highest SAR trained and most
experienced SAR person on-site. However, she would have to figure out
the political and command structure of the mission and determine in what
role she or others from VA could help. That night, Lisa together with
the other search managers successfully established an incident command
system organization under a single IC, Lisa, for mission coordination.
As someone later recalled, when she arrived on scene and began to
organize the effort, a calm began to settle on the search base. When her
relieving ICs arrived, John Punches-ASRC-SWVMRG, and Dave Carter
ASRC-TSAR, they found a well-organized search operation.
Lisa left the mission base on a bright clear morning about 8am to
make it back to the DC area in time for her afternoon job, since a
fellow co-worker had taken her original morning shift. While driving
along US Route 50 about 20 minutes after leaving base, she is believed
to have fallen asleep, her truck striking a tree at full speed, killing
her instantly. Lisa was 24 years old. She died in the line of duty, the
first such death in the Virginia search and rescue program. ALl
members of the search and rescue community honor her memory. |
