Emergency Contact

The Mountaineer Area Rescue Group is available to assist with lost person searches and rescues regardless of the weather, terrain, or time of day. MARG is also listed as a support group for cave rescues and is able to handle initial and advanced callouts over a multi-state area. For help call:

EMERGENCY ALERT
(Preston County 911 Center)
(304) 329-1855 or (304) 329-0579

When you call this number a 911 center dispatcher will take your information and our alert officer will call you back shortly.

The Mountaineer Area Rescue Group has working Memorandums of Understanding (MOU's) with Preston, Monongalia, Tucker, Marion, and Upshur counties for immediate response in the event of a lost person incident within those counties. We are continually working with other counties on MOU's to speed our response time. If you are directly involved with a county office of emergency management and would like an MOU with MARG please contact Doug Moore at 304-288-3615 or via email at doug@karstsports.com.

Cave Rescue Specific Information

Cave Rescue incidents are an extremely specialized type of rescue activity that is beyond the scope of most fire departments, ems agencies, and search & rescue groups. Because of the specialized nature of cave rescue incidents MARG has a special relationship with the Eastern Region of the National Cave Rescue Commission to aid in both initial and advanced callout of cave rescue incidents over a multi-state area. MARG as such is not a first response cave rescue organization , though many of our members respond immediately for cave rescues. MARG members have responded to assist with cave rescues in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. If you have a cave rescue situation you may contact MARG for assistance in locating additional resources both for standby and immediate assistance.

When to Call

Contact our dispatch center as soon as you suspect a person is lost. Please do not wait until local search efforts have failed as the time delay will make it more difficult to use specialized resources, such as search dogs and mantrackers. In addition to a request for a response, we can also be placed on standby. If the subject is located by your initial efforts, we can be recalled when en-route by contacting the 911 center.

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