About 2,000 people go missing in Surrey each year. Although the county is near London, the area is made up of nearly 80 per cent of rural land. Hence the Surrey Search & Rescue (SurSAR) service need to be equipped to respond when a person goes missing. A range of key safes are ensuring unrestricted access to equipment at any time of the day.
Séamus Kearns, head of operations for SurSAR, said: “Our team is one of the busiest search and rescue operations in the whole of Great Britain and we’re regularly called out to help search for missing people, including young children or adults, especially those who may be particularly vulnerable. We are lucky to have a range of resources, including search drones, vehicles and boats, available to help us move as quickly as possible, especially when time is crucial. In order to do this, we need to have instant access to this equipment, and we recognised that the services The Key Safe Company provides would be priceless to us.”
The Key Safe Company donated key products to the service, including its Supra C500 KeySafe and S7 Big Box KeySafe as a secure method of storing keys to vehicles and buildings that are required during emergencies.
Séamus added: “We are made up solely of volunteers and rely on donations to help us carry out our work so we’re grateful for the support offered by The Key Safe Company. It not only helps us significantly improve our response times but also helps to keep our operations moving as different volunteers can move vehicles around as required. It also means essential maintenance can be carried out whenever necessary and the real benefit to us is that codes can be changed or shared whenever we need them to be to ensure our equipment is never compromised.”
Volunteers are on call 24 hours; the team has over 80 volunteers and six specialist rescue dogs. As the official Lowland Rescue for Surrey, the team is trained in rapid searching techniques and navigation to cover ground; and with first aid skills.
Most recently the Department for Transport (DfT) has donated a new lifeboat. Séamus said: “Again, we found ourselves in need of a way to securely store these keys for what is an invaluable piece of kit for us. Yet again The Key Safe Company came to the rescue and kindly donated an S7 Big Box KeySafe. We’re always safe in the knowledge that all of our equipment is secure and it offers a high level of assurance, as products such as the Supra C500 is police accredited, meaning we’ve got 100 per cent peace of mind.”
