You should pay rescue charges - -

[Aprilshowersinaugust]

If you are stupid enough to go hiking wearing flip flops and carrying no supplies - not even a bottle of water, and get lost!!
News item, can't link sorry, a male nurse /keen Scout lost for 6 days survives eating bees and berries!!
Truly got my goat!!

Unreal, I mean flip flops ffs?

My dad is a keen hillwalker and is militant about being properly prepared! Also checking out weather reports, routes etc.

Obviously the weather can turn on a dime and you can’t prepare for every eventuality, but this eejit sounds like he went for a stroll not a bloody hike!

There was one up a mountain not long ago with khaki shorts and a bar of Kendal mint cake nearly frozen to his bar and unable to eat it.
I know I shouldn’t but I laughed so hard as he had to be so thick to go up there like he was.
And yes totally ageee should be fully charged for the helicopter and rescue services.

The general tone here is that you more want to punish what you perceive to be people's stupidity than recoup costs. I am told that these situations are seen as valuable training opportunities for volunteer rescuer organisations who are not at all keen on see people charged.

I don't accept that you'd avoid starvation by even one extra day by eating bees.

Stupid people might learn if it hurt there wallet

When I hiked up Snowdon on a boiling hot day (32 degrees) there were people walking up in sandals, no supplies except for a small bottle of water! Madness! Saw the air ambulance a fair few times that day

Also a key cause leading to people needing to be rescued are people who go hillwalking using only a map on a mobile phone.

The general tone here is that you more want to punish what you perceive to be people's stupidity than recoup costs. I am told that these situations are seen as valuable training opportunities for volunteer rescuer organisations who are not at all keen on see people charged

In that case, maybe the ones who do go out woefully unprepared and often in crap conditions should have to shadow mountain rescue for a week?

Not only he is an idiot who costed their services money for his own stupidity. He also owes a world bunch of all important bees.

Yes. I also think people who get drunk to the point of needing ambulance on a night out should pay

There’s a story that has been floating round the SCUBA diving instructor’s circuit for years:

Man goes out diving, gets into trouble and is winched unconscious into a Coastguard Rescue helicopter. They cut open his dry suit to check for injury and prepare access in case resuscitation is needed.

Once recovered, the man is most aggrieved at the wrecking of his expensive dry suit so decides to send the Coastguard a bill for the £800 dry suit.

The Coastguard sent him a bill for the £10,000 of mobilising the helicopter.

Funnily enough, they didn’t hear anything back...

He is interested in health and nutrition... but not common sense or geography, apparently. How ironic that he used his boy scout survival skills of eating berries and bees to keep himself alive, yet forgot their motto... Be Prepared.

I remember reading something a few years back about a teeenager who had done something a bit stupid and required rescue (I can't remember what, but not memorably strange, and his youth was a mitigation).

But he was a mix of gratitutude to his rescuers and shame that he'd taken up time/resources with something that could have been avoided, that he made it his business to find out the typical cost of the type of rescue he'd needed. And then went out and fundraised until it was paid back. All £35k of it.

It shows that people do dick-brained things from time to time - but the mark of goodness is to set things as straight as you can afterwards.

Well if they go totally unequipped and subsequently die at least it removes some stupid from the gene pool

I'm intrigued by the eating of bees, I wonder if they were they boiled or fried and was the hair removed first? Can't see a lot of nutrition in a bee.

Unreal, I mean flip flops ffs?

Shocking, isn't it? Or is it? First off, the media love to spin this kind of story and flip flops could mean anything from a pair of cheapie foam beach jobs to Keane approach sandals. This was Washington state in summer and the trail he was walking is described as "..a short walk through meadows and tall fir trees" and suitable for children. It's only 4.5 miles and is predominantly path and boardwalk. Shorts and light footwear sounds perfectly reasonable. According to a quick google of other news reports he set out with 2 litres of water and some food. It would appear he fell and got lost. Maybe he was actually not that badly equipped for the activity he set out to do.

My sister when she was early 20s had argued with a boyfriend & was feeling very depressed.
She went off to an isolated beach alone & took what she assumed was a short cut up to the top of the cliff, for what reason only she knows.
She was wearing a short skirt & normal shoes as she had driven from work.
Luckily when she got stuck halfway up the cliff she had her mobile phone on her & luckily there was a signal.
She called my mum who called 999 & she got picked up by the Coastguard helicopter.

She did get a talking to by us & a lecture from the helicopter crew obviously & was very embarrassed. But what do you do with a potentially suicidal young woman who just didn't think?

As he was so ill-prepared, and didn't even have water, presumably the bees were raw. Poor bees. 🐝

Maybe he was actually not that badly equipped for the activity he set out to do

Except it turns out he really was.

It’s the bees I feel sorry for.

I visited the Grand Canyon a few years ago and when you go on the trails they have big signs saying they might not be able to rescue you if you get into trouble, so don’t do the trails if you aren’t prepared/able etc, underneath there was another bit saying if needed you may be charged for cost of the rescue helicopter

I wouldn't have thought mobile phones would work down the Grand Canyon, so summoning help might be a problem. Of course, phone coverage is dodgy in uplands even in the U.K.

When we rafted down the Colorado in about 1990 we were warned that if there was an emergency, the only way to get a signal out was if a plane flew over that the crew could radio to.

Exactly. Which is why people go hiking with phones, and then find their phone signal vanishes. And if they have no map or compass, end up ringing to be rescued.

I can't open the link but if it's the guy I think it us from Ohio I believe he was wearing trekking sandals which is fairly common in the usa where generally the trails are better.

Someone I vaguely know has been missing for over a year, nearly 2 and was also wearing sandals when he was last seen.

I someone from the highlands. His father is a volunteer mountain rescuer. He has had to carry a dead infant down from a mountain. Bloody parents thought a nice walk wearing inadequate clothing would be fine, weather closed in as it tends to do in Scotland. They got lost and strayed so far it took ages to locate them. This is what angers me, put yourself in danger if you want but not others. You endager the rescuers as well bebeing a fucking tube!

Search and rescue in America is actually mainly free. The difference is that some states will indeed charge if they deem the person has being reckless or negligent. But they don’t specify what this is.

A while ago someone was billed for his rescue because he’d previously had a bad back and the state felt that going out for a hike when you’re back could potentially go was reckless.

I don’t think Washington state charge so this guy will probably be ok....apart from medical bills which he will have to pay but he should be insured for that.