Re: Rescue on Mt Shasta

They just found a guy on Mt Shasta who spent two nights, alone. His friends left him behind because he was lagging. He had no map, compass, gps or experience. One guy had to make a flight, so he bailed rather quickly. The other guy at least, stayed with the rescue teams till they found their missing partner. When they brought the guy into base his partner broke down into tears.

They had Blackhawk and Huey choppers, several ground teams, including dogs, looking for the guy.

This is what we call an INS mission

Interfering with Natural Selection.




Just had to vent.

So who ends up paying for this type of rescue? Don't the people who need rescuing have to pay if the situation isn't an emergency?

Every State and County is different. I can only speak to Northern CA, where I live and how it was done 2/3 years ago.

In Shasta County, we send the bill to the county the person comes from and hope the county pays. It's then up to that county to bill the person or not. We do have an unspoken agreement with other local county's (those that boarder us)....we don't bill you if you don't bill us. Part of that is also because we get called out to assist with mutual aid from Siskiyou, Tehama, Lassen and Trinity County all the time.

Rescues are often used as training for many of the groups that respond. The National Guard for example, adds rescues to their training logs I believe. Most ground pounders are volunteers for the local Sheriff's office. It's the local county's who actually pay the brunt of the costs. We often used our total budget for SAR in the first 4 months of the year. Much of that goes for overtime for Sheriff Deputy's. The National Parks also get hit with the overtime element.

Each area has it's own peculiarities and requirements. It would be difficult to do something on a national level. Most folks would be amazed how often SAR is called out each year. A very small percentage is due to climbers, even smaller for backpackers. It's usually hunters, Alzheimer's patients, kids, hikers, missing 4x4 enthusiasts and the like.

I like the abbreviation Steve, kinda funny.

The whole cost issue and billing the rescued party is a real hot button topic in CO too. Just recently a hiker twisted his ankle and had to be rescued from Clear Creek Canyon. He was visiting from Kansas and got billed about 5,000 bucks for his rescue. The argument was that the county that did the rescue was called out of their 'service area' - which I'm not sure I really understand. Most county sherrifs in CO claim that they do not bill for rescues - they don't want injured parties debating whether they can afford the rescue and having a bad situation become worse. ALL of the area volunteer SAR teams have a standard policy of not billing. The county agencies though each set their own policy.

It's messing, confusing and highly controversial.

damn, his friends left him behind for lagging?

and as to the bill. well now you all understand why i hiked 12 miles out with a locked knee in November 06. i would have crawled through cactus rather than call help.