Granted there are no easy answers, and you lay out very succinctly the many factors involved in the decision to suspend or not.
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You mention the availability of resources, especially searchers, and this is where volunteer SAR organizations can really contribute, since an organization of reasonable size and competence can contribute bods for prolonged periods.
I can't speak to how things worked when you were active in SAR. I can say that in many cases these days, getting enough
trained and
qualified volunteers to maintain a search for longer than a week can be tough. This is especially true when there have been no clues found to suggest the subject is still alive or to focus the search in some area. It is easier to get volunteers on a weekend, but when the search extends into the work week many people find it hard to take more than a day or two off from their jobs.
I also suspect that the overall spirit of volunteerism is probably not what it once was in our country. For example I've read that many smaller communities that once relied on volunteer fire departments have had so much trouble getting enough people to join that they have been forced to go to paid departments. Many SAR teams don't have nearly as many trained/experienced members as they would like. SAR sounds exciting and glamorous, but when people find out how much work it takes to get and stay qualified, and that many missions are not glamorous, and are only Type 2 Fun (at best), they often drop out.
I don't know about the stated policy of other organizations, but the saving of lives is paramount within the National Park Service. Costs are typically minimized by using volunteers to augment a core cadre of trained staff. In or out of the NPS, I have never heard of a search being suspended because of costs.
I doubt you will ever see any sheriff or ranger
publicly admit that cost was a factor in terminating a search. However, these days virtually every public agency has less money to spend than they need. And a significant segment of the general public seems very focused on cutting government spending. You will note that here on ETS we have frequently had extended and heated debates on billing people for SAR missions.
The reallity is that when searches get long money (for supplies, helicopters, overtime for public employees, etc) does become an issue. The list of factors for suspending a search that I posted earlier was based on Chapter 16 in
Find 'Em: A Guide for Planning the Missing Person Incident Response, two of the authors of which are retired NPS rangers. They also list "Political Pressures" as one of the factors.
I still feel that suspension of a search effort after seven days is cutting it off too soon. In this case, the victim was clearly still alive. It is a shame that her signalling efforts were not better or that searchers missed what might have been a significant clue.
I totally agree. In a perfect world they would have searched longer, and resource availability and cost would not be an issue. Unfortunately, state police, sheriffs, rangers, and search managers don't work in a perfect world.