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The whole point of the Incident Command System is to organize roles and delegate authority over groups of people made up of 5-8 at most. That being said, when you have a massive search (such as the latest Kyron Horman search in Oregon) you don’t have one IC commanding 100 teams in the field. The IC is responsible for directly managing 5-8 section leaders who are responsible for 5-8 group managers, etc, etc. At the team level, there is little difference. A Field Team Leader should be limited to a group of 5-8 searchers. At base, a command or communication resource (call it a Field Team Coordinator) could be directed to manage 5 Field Team Leaders….and so on, up the chain of command.
All that being said, I think a search and rescue team can operate effectively with hundreds of members, provided that it is managed properly….from the top-down, utilizing NIMS/ICS protocols.
A volunteer SAR team is nothing more than a part-time non-profit corporation. If for-profit full-time corporations can manage hundreds of people, why can’t SAR teams or missions learn to do the same?
I have read a few times that the maximum size for any group of people is about 150 people because of the number of relationships that the human brain can track. Does this mean that the maximum team size for search and rescue is about 150 people? This seems too big for me, so what else might be limiting the team size?