https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/...line/981922002/

A local hiker is "lost," whips out his cell phone, and is heloed out. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, his friend goes searching for him, and gets lost as well.

So many things wrong here. I am sure there will be comments. Have at it....

At least everyone got out in good shape - everyone safe.

if you'd like to see a short video from the chopper of the lost hiker being hoisted out, go here:

Ventura County Air Unit

Who pays for the cost of these rescues??

If folks get hurt and need rescue I understand it, but these folks appear to just be unprepared and thus lost.

A Garmin GPSMAP 64st with U.S. topo maps costs only $260 online and can easily help them get unlost. The GPS and topo map will shown them where they are, the electronic compass will tell them directions, and if they would capture important local waypoints before heading out they should be able to find their own way.

I'll bet the helicopter rescues cost more than $260!!

Cranking the helicopter costs more than that.

Always the age old question of "who pays?" It is often to say that the lost people should pay. However that is the convenient and easy answer.

This question comes up frequently here on this forum and it is position of many SAR teams and associations that they don't charge for rescue.

The SAR association in my area takes that position, of which I agree with.

http://www.bcsara.com/about/faq/no-charge-for-search-and-rescue/

As for people who venture out under the guise of their own search team. Often it is not only humans they go searching for, but for other people's pets also.

A well known, local case some years ago prompted one of our premier SAR teams to initiate a search for the lost dog - if only to prevent other people from getting lost or hurt.

http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/rescu...7101/story.html

I agree totally with Teslinhiker on the subject of paying. In most operations, you are working with volunteers - no cost. If you start charging, there are all sorts of unintended consequences.

Think about this. Does your fire department charge whenever they respond to a fire or potential fire in your house? Probably not, at least not directly. It is a community service, supported mostly by taxes.

What does puzzle me is why the chopper was deployed in the first place. There apparently was a ground team that would have been with him quickly (we are not talking about a vast, trackless wilderness). Hoist operations are not exactly guaranteed safe operations.

Thiker mentions people looking for pets. For many years, the biggest donation given to our group was from a grateful dog owner whose mutt we pulled from a mine shaft. (Not exactly hazard free, either, for that matter). Call it a training exercise....

Cost? Two years ago we chartered a helo to move an 1100 pound mammoth fossil skull about fifteen miles. Cost was reportedly $13,000 for a one hour flight.

Still, all's well that ends well.

Lots of issues here, some of which are more complex than they might first appear.

First off, the obligatory disclaimers that none of us were there, most of us are probably not familiar with that terrain or conditions on the ground, and press accounts usually get parts of the story wrong. But we can all probably agree that the individual shouldn't have become lost in the first place. And his buddy certainly should not have gone off searching by himself and also become lost.

Launching the mission was probably appropriate. He called in at 02:30 AM and was lost. Current SAR training is to treat searches as an emergency until proven otherwise. Given the lack of info in most cases, it is very difficult to decide who is really in serious trouble, and who isn't. So you treat all missions as serious. Yes you will often go out to find people who aren't really in all that much danger. But if you try to get too clever, sooner or later someone will die, someone you could easily have saved had you taken the initial report more seriously.

In a search like that, in that sort of terrain, a helicopter is a great tool. If even an ordinary basic helo is available, any IC with half a brain would ask for it. You can cover a lot of ground looking, drop ground pounders into strategic spots, evacuate injured people quickly, etc.

I do have serious issues with winching the guy out. Using a helo in any fashion adds some risk to mission. Statistics show that aviation accidents are one of the leading causes of death and injuries in SAR missions. Winching someone out significantly increases the danger. Since the guy wasn't injured, I would have to ask if it wouldn't have been safer to feed and hydrate him, then walk him out to a road?

Helicopters are expensive but they are wonderfully versatile tools, and there are good reasons why law enforcement, parks, and other agencies go the expense of having one available. Maintaining a winch capability is significantly more expensive. To do winch evolutions with any reasonable degree of safety requires not just the extra equipment, but extensive and constant training for all involved. That being said, in some situations a helicopter with a winch is the only tool that can do the job. When you need it, you need it really bad!!

Once a helo (with a winch) was on scene, lifting the guy out probably added little if any additional cost. As noted above, the up front expense of merely having that capability available is where the cost is. When a county has gone to the expense of building this capability, it is likely that higher ups are going to ask if they are getting their moneys worth? They might ask "....OK, so how many people have you actually saved this year with that winch?" This in turn might lead to a subtle pressure on the SAR team to use it, even if it might not be the safest or most appropriate tool in a given situation. And of course when you've put in all that effort at training with a tool, there is certainly a desire to actually use it. These are the sorts of things that can lead to good people making bad decisions.

Here in Alaska, the only winch capability is with the military. The Alaska State Troopers have a number of helos, but if a winch is required, we have to call on either the Coast Guard or the PJs. While this sometimes means that it takes longer to get a winch capable helo, it tends to cut down on the number of questionable winch missions. The NPS does "short haul" rescues on Denali, but that is a very different thing. And the NPS only does a short haul after carefully evaluating all other options.

Regarding paying for rescue, as Teslinhiker notes, in N America most SAR agencies don't believe people should be charged, except perhaps in the most egregious cases. One concern is that if people are afraid of being billed for a rescue, they won't call for help until they are in the most desperate situations. By delaying because of fear of cost, what could have been a relatively simple rescue can become a very complex and dangerous mission. So we encourage people to carry cell phones, PLBs, etc. I worry that this sometimes tends to discourage people from self rescue. People who might have been able to walk out decide to follow the advice of people like us here on ETS. How many threads haven't we had where the consensus was "...he should have carried a PLB!"

The law of unintended consequences!

Many years ago I worked on a volunteer ambulance. Us volunteers didn't get paid, we did it for free. However, we bought a small building to house two ambulances in, that also had a central living area for our crews. We slept on the floors in our sleeping bags. We bought two ambulances. They cost $80,000 each (this was back in the 80's). That as just the base cost of the vehicle. We then had to buy radio systems, O2 setups, defibrillators, etc. and arrange for the local police to act as our dispatchers. All medical supplies that went inside the ambulances were extra cost. Many of those supplies had short shelf lives and had to be replaced often. The local hospital graciously supplied us with the required "physician adviser" at no cost. The ambulances required gasoline to run, and also routine maintenance. For long term volunteers (years of service) we provided training free of cost as a thank you. I had my Paramedic school paid for like that. Of course, we had to serve additional years after that training was paid for. We got zero tax dollars.

How could we do all that "for free"? We couldn't. Volunteers bought their own personal uniforms and supplies, but asking them to chip in to buy buildings and vehicles was a tad too much. So we had "memberships" that we sold every year. For $20, I think it was, you, your family, and any guests in your house received unlimited ambulance transportation for a year. The local newspaper was great and published nice articles every year during our membership drive to generate interest in the town. Townsfolk who didn't want to participate were billed if they called us for transport, and got to figure out how to pay in conjunction with their insurance companies. Our bills were cheap compared to other for-profit ambulance services in nearby areas, but a single bill could easily run into the 100's of dollars. If our patients didn't pay, we didn't advertise the fact, but we just wrote it off as a loss and prayed that we'd have enough money to continue operating.

For SAR, I would propose something like we used to do. At the state level, offer a "rescue membership" for a fee. The state then would dole out the money to the various SAR operations. For the victims who chose not to participate, bill them. And then on an individual basis, decide what percentage of the bill would justifiably be written off based on the actions of the victim, their self-entitlement appearance, their attitude, how stupid they were to get themselves into the predicament, etc. Jerks don't get freebies, but normal people who made a genuine and understandable mistake might.

A fascinating and enlightening thread!

this issue has been around since we began using helicopters for SAR. they certainly have a time and place. i sometimes think they are a solution looking for a problem.

my favorite story is here:

Third time is the charm

AKSAR — Could the winch mission have made sense in this case from a training perspective? Especially since the helo was onsite due to the search?

I am skeptical about the need for winch use in this case, but I believe AKSAR has nailed an important consideration - justifying the capability.

This applies to more than just helos and their winches. It is also a consideration for rescue organizations (and their wenches). If the outfit is called insufficiently, members lose interest and acquire other priorities. Regular exercise is good for organizations, as well as individuals....

Every request for assistance should be treated as an emergency, with prompt response, but I think that in this case, response by a ground team would have been fine.

I am reasonably familiar with the back country in question, and it is pretty mellow terrain. In fact, I am genuinely puzzled as to how the victim became disoriented. It is summer here in SoCal - temps are moderate and there are no storms of any consequence. But thank heaven he did not light a signal fire......

I agree that helos are wonderful tools, but they do have their hazards. The only SAR-related memorial service I have ever attended was for a pilot and copilot who crashed while returning to base from their last mission of the day. They had just dropped off two of our group.....

Possibly. That's how the AF and ANG rescue teams (PJs, Pavehawks, and HC-130s) justify doing civilian rescue. The USCG is mandated to do civil SAR, primarily maritime. They can easily justify maintaining winch capability on that basis. The USCG gets enough maritime missions to keep them in practice. The AF SAR folks mission is only to rescue military personnel, and they can justify maintaining the capability on that basis. But the AF/ANG wouldn't get as much opportunity to actually do it, at least when they aren't deployed down range. So for them, doing civil SAR missions is easily justified as training.

This is really the crux of the issue. How much of this sort of capability do we need in any one area? Too little, and you won't have it when you really need it. Too much, and you start using it in questionable cases. I can easily see that Ventura County could justify having a basic helo. But do they really need their own winch capability that bad? Or could they call on nearby USCG or AF assets when they really need it? I'm asking the question. I don't know the answer.

Ditto for me. A helo pilot and State Trooper died, on a mission that was probably not necessary.

Good question. We have lately been having problems with big fires and mudslides (Montecito) and I believe there were some hoist ops at Montecito. Of course,this is earthquake country, and when the Big One arrives, doubtless we will be hoisting and dropping in aplenty. and there is a big ocean at our doorstep, and hoisting comes in handy there,as well.

It seems to me that hoisting helos are more generally in use than was the case thirty or so years ago. I just need to keep up with the times.