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OPINION: Non-emergency Alaska 'rescues' a drain on finite resourcesRecent reports indicate that calling for a wilderness rescue is becoming more frequent among unlucky or unprepared Alaska backcountry travelers who end up in unpleasant, but not deadly, situations.
Technology now allows people to call for evacuation from circumstances that, while perhaps traumatic or unsettling, are not immediately life-threatening. Such calls for rescues are becoming practically routine in recent years, and it’s not just Cheechakos calling for help. People just don't seem to recognize that calling for rescue in a situation that isn’t immediately life-threatening puts search and rescue crews in a serious dilemma. They must answer every call for help -- no matter what the nature of the emergency -- and by personal dedication and state policy, they must respond, even if it means risking their own lives. Such "rescues" constitute a growing and unnecessary drain on state resources and law enforcement personnel. A simple solution might be to pass a state law similar to the policy that now applies to the U.S. Coast Guard’s rescue response, the “Maritime SAR Assistance Policy.” It stipulates, in many parts of the country, that unless people are in immediate, life-threatening danger, the Coast Guard will refer the call for help to a private, for-profit company, which then charges for the “rescue.” Some conscientious people in Alaska are already taking it upon themselves to call private companies instead of the Alaska State Troopers for non-emergency wilderness evacuations. But panic overrides civic duty for too many others. Alaska Dispatch encourages a diversity of opinion and community perspectives. The opinions expressed herein are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch.To submit commentary, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com. This editorial is just a bunch of junk from beginning to end. The Coast Guard policy is a good one, but it has 12 pages of steps and many considerations, and apparently that is too complicated for this paper to figure out. There is no law that SAR must risk lives to respond to every call for help. The link provided in the article doesn't work, but read the Coast Guard policy yourself. Unlike this editorial, it actually was intelligently thought out. http://www.d1nr-bcqp.us/documents/MSAP_2E.pdf Note that an overriding consideration for the Coast Guard is that THEY WANT PEOPLE TO CALL FOR HELP EARLY. Of course they don't wait until "people are in immediate, life-threatening danger" before they respond. That is just stupid and would result in much more cost and more deaths. It is easy and fun to make fun of people who call for help these days. And sure SAR should talk some of those out of rescue and towards self-help. But if people are scared and they can call SAR, they should call SAR and get professional help and advice. I hate spending days and days in Alaska weather searching for people who didn't call when they thought they were in trouble. Two towns I am familiar with in the state that do an outstanding job of search and rescue, Barrow and Nome. It might be good to check their modles as to search authorization, timelyness etc. This is the dilemma, who makes the decision and what is the criteria? Here are real situations I have experienced, one last trip to camp a storm blows in and closes the road (troopers policy 24 hours before starting to help, 1980's) family wades through waist deep snow to recover their kin; party of eight snowmachining to camp because of communications at that time three days before search starts party found three days into search(Nome Search and Rescue leads CAP air search) one dead 6 hospitalize; Party of two on mountain top 3870, another party leaves note for them to stop by camp below and check in, no check in note still on car, call (yup things get modern)to see when they are due home, they are overdo, call to dispatch who would not relay to search and rescue which is done on own found alive when fog lifts; man at camp leaves note departed week earlier search never found. Who decides which was a search relavant enough to go help? The troopers provided the money and PR, locals the searches before troopers authorized anything. OH and a Big thanks to Nome Search and rescue for their organized efforts in many other searches. The State Trooper complaining because they are compelled to do unreasonable searches. The StateTroopers complaining sounds a lot like the fox complain about guarding the Chicken coup because he has had his fill of chickens. Just for you Cheechakos, there was a time when we went searching with a prop, carburetor, dope, fabric, bailing wire, etc. because we knew the pilot and his plane, where he would most likely be found and what he would mostly need. Now they go looking with a body bag. They call it progress and as you know you cannot and dare not stop progress. Gasman, you are right, in the old days, that is how we looked for and rescued many an intrepid aviator. The problem is that now days it seems that most of them need the body bag more than anything else. People are not even close to as self sufficient as those old timers were. Privatization of emergency services works well in many regions and communities. There is no reason why it couldn't work equally well in some regions of Alaska, where the call volume (numbers of people seeking assistance) is high enough to minimize the required subsidies. I believe a "fee for service" system might be an effective tool for minimizing unnecessary calls for help, but it also might dissuade people from calling for assistance in circumstances where it truly is needed. There are no easy answers, and probably never will be a good solution. Where besides Denali are there more than one or two calls per year? McGrath had several aviation crashes this year, but other years it has none. Privatization is the name of the game. Who decides what is life threatening? A panel of private helicopter pilots? I agree that there should be some sort of limits for situations like the most recent CSP rescue - but turning rescue into a for profit business is the wrong approach. A better approach would be to have a state SAR personnel evaluate each rescue and if the rescue is deemed unnecessary then the state can sue to recoup losses. Is "privatization" being used as a cuss-word here? What would be the opposite word to privatization? Socialism? Communism? Society has 'formalized' or institutionalized specific (civilian) emergency response capabilities. (There are highly developed versions in the police, military and intelligence spheres, since, all along & forever, all of the leading pack of threats, hazards & dangers, come from other human beings.) "Firefighters" is a stand-out example. Cities found it acceptable to pool their resources, then tax themselves, to post standing, full-time crews to jump-to on fires. The problem with fire is extremely well & tightly defined, which makes the institutionalization of firefighting 'practical'. Mixed-bags of threat-response ideas, tho, lead to 'quagmire'. It is a very significant challenge, to "evaluate" (and that is the word), the nature & severity of a request for aid. Alaska is fortunate in this particular case, because they use State Police for SAR. Police receive training & practice in such evaluation. Elsewhere, it's very different. Much of SAR, however, has nothing to do with police work, and personnel will be very uncomfortable, trying to make these kinds of evaluation. And for that matter, much of real SAR duty will not be amenable to the skills of police. To illustrate what I'm saying ... the first letter in SAR is for Search. More-traditionally, the problem is that somebody did not return as expected, and now we have to try to find them. There is little-to-no role for evaluation in the classic "search" context. But today, we have communications & other devices in the hands of some 'missing' parties, which shows us exactly where they are ... and they can "report" to us. There is no "search" component, in this type of SAR ... and police are good at this version. 'Real' missing-person "searches" require the old-type SAR approach, at which police are poorly adapted & equipped. If someone is actually 'missing', we typically have only inferences about the situation they might be in. Normally, we have 'no idea' whether they are dead-and-gone, suffering, larking-off, or what. Instituting "evaluation" procedures will not be useful in these kinds of cases. Lastly, we don't want to overlook that there also serious differences in the kinds of responses that the Coast Guard makes in aid of "boaters", and the kinds of responses needed for folks in the woods, mountains, etc. Boaters have some "acute" issue, typically ... and all of the Coastie tradtion we're talking about, is predicated on the assumption that the boater has radio communication and knows his location (Coasties did not offer this kind of service, before boaters had radios). So Coastie rescue is like 'modern' cell phone & GPS rescue ... it's just a matter of punching through the weather (usually the trouble anyway) ... and commonly the "search" component in this version of so-called SAR will be peripheral to non-existent. |
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