Our History

Ozark Rescue Suppliers (ORS) began its humble journey in Rogers, Arkansas during the year of 1991. As you can see from the pictures within this web page we continue to be active professionally in search and rescue (SAR) and personally in the wonderful outdoor opportunities we have locally and throughout the United States. The company owner was exposed initially to the field of SAR during his experiences with the Boy Scouts of America where he attained the rank of Eagle Scout. Subsequentlly he pursued his Bachelor of Arts degree from then Memphis State University where he also attended Park Ranger career training in the fall of 1982 and spring of 1983. It was during that training regiment that he received his first official SAR course instructed by the National Park Service. He became more involved in the discipline in 1987, eventually leading the development of the first, well respected, regional/local agency SAR team located in Benton County, Arkansas. During that same period for fourteen years he was also the program/incident coordinator and lead instructor for the reputable state agency training and response program of Arkansas State Parks. All of these responsibilities required him to travel extensively to obtain nationally recognized training bringing it back to the region and cross- training fellow teammates and colleagues. Because of those training experiences and communication with other SAR organizations in the United States, it was apparent that a need for search and rescue training and equipment existed in the four-state region of Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. Further exposure revealed that professional training in the fields of search/search management, swift water/flash flood rescue, technical rope rescue, and cave rescue was very much lacking. This was not only the case in the four-state region, but in the mid-west and southeast particularly in the professional disciplines of fire service, law enforcement and emergency medicine. Due to his networking and incident response, within a short period of time the owner was frequently contacted for consultation on various SAR training disciplines and advice on various types of equipment within multiple response venues. As a result of these experiences and a vision toward the future – the concept and businness plan of ORS was developed!

What began next was an extensive travel schedule over the next two years visiting and exposing every fire department and other emergency service organizations to Ozark Rescue Suppliers. We personally contacted every city with a population of 5,000 or more in the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and most of Florida.

Thanks to the devotion of many faithful customers and dedicated training course participants, ORS is now one of the leaders in search and rescue equipment and training, particularly in the mid-west and southeast regions of the United States. ORS was incorporated in the year 2005 and still operates from its home office in Rogers, Arkansas. Today, ORS continues to be a strong, competitive company following its original vision of.....

           Right Training! Right Equipment!! Right Response!!!