I would agree with Jerry Fountain. I have seen many situations where non-First Responders productively aided the operations. On one memorable occasion my very own DD, all of thirteen years old, was part of a crew of untrained volunteers that pulled on the rope of a Z rig as we brought out the remains of a drowning victim at the end of a very long, dramatic, and deadly day. On another occasion, three of us guided and provided OJT for about ten hikers and climbers as we lowered a stretcher and victim about two hundred feet to a LZ over non-trivial terrain. Their actions were quite competent.

I also recall vividly the time I violated protocol, firing a line gun to place a rope across a flooding stream and secure two victims stranded on a sloping rock by a classic southwestern "wall of water" flood. Normally one of the deputies who were present on virtually every operation would have handled the line gun, but they were both on the other side of the canyon when the water came down, quite out of the picture. I figured I was the closest thing to a trained individual with access to the appliance (I had a LE commission in the NPS at the time, and reasonable firearms training) so I stepped up and pulled the trigger, so to speak. It was a clear violation of the policies then in force but the ladies were rescued successfully.

I would say that untrained individuals can materially assist emergency operations, but proper oversight and supervision is absolutely necessary.

As a member of an active and vigorous mountain SAR group for several years, I was struck at how often the diverse occupations of the group contributed to greater effectiveness. We had members who were physicians, mathematics professors, biochemists, engineers, students, and even an archaeologist or two. One of our most stalwart members was a dendrochronologist (ten bonus points if you can identify what he did). What we shared was a common interest in the outdoors and in aiding others. The different occupational specialties often provided novel approaches and solutions