Cass County Sheriff's Office 911 Services

Cass County Search and Rescue Team

RHINO donated by Nishna Valley Cycle, Chief Deputy Brian Rink unloading equipment.

Chief Deputy Brian Rink navigating the search and rescue boot purchased from RescueOne. Seated is DNR officer Josh Peach and Emergency Management Director Jeremiah Thompson.

Cass County Diver Kurt Reason.

Cass County Divers, Kurt Reason and Brad Lank, using the Rhino donated by Nishna Valley Cycle.

Dive training in Lake Anita by area dive teams.

Cass County to get ATVs for Search and Rescue Team
By Laura Bacon, NT Staff Writer
Thanks to a special program through Yamaha, the Cass County Search and Rescue team and Cass County Sheriff’s office will be better able to respond to off-road emergencies. According to Cass County Sheriff Bill Sage, Dennis Murphy of Nishna Valley Cycle came back from a Yamaha sales meeting with a program he thought might be of interest to local law enforcement. Sage said he had been looking at purchasing an ATV for the Search and Rescue team, and Yamaha’s program could help. The program allows law enforcement agencies to lease ATVs at no cost. Sage talked about the program while visiting with the Cass County Supervisors last Wednesday, and said under the program he just had to fill in the paperwork to request the units. “We will be asking for two,” Sage said, noting the ATVs would be multi-purpose, helping with medical emergencies in the field, helping the Search and Rescue transport equipment where larger vehicles might not be able to go, and helping law enforcement in areas where cars and trucks couldn’t. Sage noted that having the ATVs could have been helpful in recent cases, including one where officers were searching for stolen four-wheelers near Anita, or in a case near Interstate 80, where a large number of illegal aliens ran away from the site of an accident and had to be tracked down in woods and fields. The leases last six months, and then the vehicles would be replaced by Yamaha, and there is no cost for the county, Sage said, except for equipment that might be needed on the ATVs, and the cost of a trailer needed to haul them on. And since the money for equipment and the trailer would probably come from the “seized funds account,” Sage said there would be no cost to the county. The ATVs that were being requested were Yamaha Rhinos, Sage said.