Allegheny Mountain Rescue Group

Yesterday the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police requested AMRG's Boat & Water Search Team for an operation on the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers around point state park. Pittsburgh River Rescue, Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire, and AMRG each provided boats and AMRG canines worked from each of the platforms. Joint operations like these help to familiarize our search dogs with different types of boats and allow our crews to coordinate the operation of multiple boats working together.

In addition to water searching, we also conducted boat-to-boat transfers, and worked through significant distractions including many recreational boats on the water and being in close proximity to two sets of celebratory fireworks when the Pirates hit home runs. What a second inning! Go Buccos! Raise It!

Update: Located safe!

Please be on the lookout for this vehicle in Westmoreland County.

Another great night of K9 training in the books. Despite the rain and muddy conditions, our handlers and dogs showed up ready to work with high spirits and strong teamwork throughout the evening.

Trailing and air scent teams worked side-by-side on a variety of search problems, while our HRD teams trained on elevated, concealed, and shoreline scenarios. These environments challenge both dog and handler to work through difficult scent conditions and build the confidence and skills needed for real-world deployments.

Many of our searches take place at night and in less-than-ideal weather conditions, so it is critical that our K9 teams are prepared to operate effectively in the dark, rain, cold, and difficult terrain. Training in these conditions helps ensure our dogs remain confident, reliable, and mission ready when the call comes.

A huge thank you as well to Wilderdog for their generous donation of treat pouches for our K9 teams. We truly appreciate the support for our working dogs and handlers!

We hope you can come out to a very important event — 4th Annual Missing Persons Awareness Day at Schenley Park on Saturday, June 6th from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

This event helps bring awareness to missing persons cases, supports families and loved ones, and highlights the importance of community involvement in search and rescue efforts.

We look forward to seeing members of the community come together for this meaningful day. Please stop by, learn more, show your support, see our Team truck, meet members of our Team, including our K9s.

📍 Schenley Park
📅 Saturday, June 6
🕚 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM

Outstanding work by Keystone State Park DCNR Park Manager Kris Baker - who is well deserving of this life saving award from Latrobe City Council!

We are honored to have worked with Park Manager Baker on a number of SAR incidents and trainings.

Three standout citizens honored at Latrobe City Council meeting Latrobe City Council honored three community members for exceptional work Monday night.

Today AMRG participated in a mock search hosted by the Slickville VFD in Westmoreland county.

The mock search included multi-agency teams conducting grounds searches and large area canine searches and the evacuation of a simulated injured patient.

Thank you to the volunteers at Slickville VFD for organizing this mock search and providing lunch! It is always a pleasure working with your department!

Today’s K9 training brought some of the best parts of what we do in Search and Rescue: teamwork, cross-discipline learning, and problem-solving under real challenge conditions.

Air scent and trailing teams spent time working side-by-side, not just running separate problems, but actively observing and learning from each other’s handling styles, decision-making, and search strategies. That kind of shared training space helps build a stronger, more cohesive search unit when every second counts in the field.

HRD had a particularly demanding day. The dogs worked through a series of difficult scenarios with multiple negative “false hole” distractors followed by actual buried problems. It wasn’t about speed today—it was about clarity, persistence, and trust in training. Those kinds of setups test both dog and handler in a way that sharpens problem recognition and reinforces clean final responses.

Days like this aren’t always pretty in real time, but they’re where the most growth happens. Every mistake, every hesitation, and every correct call adds up to better performance when it matters most.

Strong work today across all teams. The progress shows in the details. 🐾

Congratulations to AMRG member and K9 handler Lucy Klimko for being selected as Rescue Direct's National Volunteer Month Volunteer Gear Grant recipient. Thank you to Rescue Direct for recognizing and rewarding Lucy's years of dedicated service to the community.

For National Volunteer Month, we're giving back with a $250 Volunteer Gear Grant to help a volunteer rescuer or volunteer team replace worn-out gear, upgrade essentials, or complete their rescue kit.

How to enter:
1️⃣ Tag a volunteer rescuer in the comments
2️⃣ Tell us what they do: Fire, SAR, Rope Rescue, Water Rescue, USAR, or EMS
3️⃣ Share why they deserve the grant
4️⃣ Bonus: Share this post to your story and tag Rescue Direct

Whether they’re answering calls in fire rescue, search and rescue, rope rescue, or water rescue, we want to recognize the volunteers who keep their communities ready.

Who are you nominating, and what kind of work do they do? 👇

Open to US Residents only.

🎉 Welcoming Our 2026 New Member Cohort!

On Saturday AMRG kicked off our 2026 New Member Cohort with orientation training for our weekend crew — and what a start it was!

Before training even began, AMRG was called into action — just after midnight on Friday we were requested to assist with a search for a missing juvenile in Penn Hills. Thankfully, the child was quickly located safely. Our dedicated instructors got a little sleep and were right back at it the next morning, ready to welcome our newest cohort. 💪

We are thrilled to welcome 36 new members who will spend the next six months learning the core skills needed to support search and rescue operations in our community.

Saturday's training covered an introduction to search techniques, Patient packaging and litter movement over rough terrain, Overview of AMRG's squad truck and rescue equipment.

We are so grateful for the commitment of our instructors, our current members, and the 36 new volunteers who are stepping up to serve our community. We can't wait to watch them grow, train, and join the team!

Welcome to the family!

And we will be doing it all again in a few days to welcome even more new members with a similar training for our weekday crew.

Update on missing juvenile from Whitehall PD: