We see on the news about these three climbers who lost their way in Oregon. For over a week now dozens of people using helicopters, RPVs, radios, climbing gear, hundreds of person hours and risking their lives to find these 3 lost guys. Who is paying for all this? The lost guys won't pay for it because they are probably dead. The question is... why? I had a bad car accident 3 years ago where they had to chopper me out of a canyon and guess what? I got a bill for 25,000 bux and I'm still paying for it. If they never find these guys and the national guard and rescue teams have gone to all this effort who gets the bill?
Thier estate would pay the bills if the emergency services wanted to recover the cost of search and rescue efforts. Death does not void the debts of the deceased.
I'm trying to figure why this was plastered over the news networks, preempting scheduled shows. Three people at risk of dying in the USA? How many die a night in US inner city slums? Guess that isn't news.
Don't know what this has to do with metalworking, but...
This, "Who pays the bill..." question always comes up and maybe rightly so. Seems like private insurance might cover the cost as it does with so many automobile accidents? You are least one could buy such insurance?
My suggestion to those who question the public paying for search & rescue is to let the next people who get lost - just stay lost. We wouldn't even need to extract their bodies. Think of the $ we'd save.
It wouldn't be a problem for most of us - UNTIL WE OR LOVED ONES NEED HELP, WHICH IS THEN DENIED BASED UPON THE COST! So how much value do we as a society put on a human life? When we "max" out the budget who tells the family? What if it's your son?
Very valid points Bob This happens alot where somebody goes missing and there is a huge search. Here in San Diego about 4 months ago an elderly couple just disappeared. There were dozens of people out hunting for them for about
2 weeks. They had just driven off the road and died in the car. Does the state just confiscate their home to pay for over a million bucks worth of search time? What if one of these old people had lived and needed hospitalization for
3 months? Is the county just going to say so sorry and put them on the street because they could never pay for a search and rescue? Is it because they were old that they are immune? I'm about 50. I would not be immune because I didn't make it past 65. So are these dead guys families on Mt Hood going to be bankrupt because they took a walk into the wilderness? .
not really: sar and the county sheriff's office in oregon are only allowed to collect a few hundred dollars max for each rescue and most feel we should not charge as it might delay responce to lost persons and each hour increases the search area, one thing that is not spoken of much is the fact people say what are they going to do well what are you doing sar is almost entirly unpaid and spend massive amount of thier own time training for this kind of thing. we need more people in all aspects of sar and we need them now, what are you doing?
The state/local eats it. National Guard usually writes it off as a training expense.
Your medivac was probably via a private company.
Gunner
Political Correctness
A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
Yes good point, but it could be you or me that gets medivaced by a private concern or a public one that has decided to charge the rescued for cost. My point is that we do not know. Most insurance policies do not specifically cover this kind of risk. Does anybody know of a insurance company that specifically sells these policies? Steve
I'll throw in my thoughts at the risk of those who will flame me for hijacking the thread. For those people, go put your head in a gas oven and turn it on.
WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING?
According to the story I read, they were climbing in the worst month to climb, they took the worst route, and the other two may have fallen in an area known to be prone to avalanches.
The article says that their route was tough, and that they were preparing for tougher climbs, perhaps on other mountains.
These men leave wives and several children.
And for what?
I have hiked mountains in summer, and didn't understand the point of it all until I had hiked my first. Notice I said hiked, and not climbed. I took the trails, but still a very hard thing to do with a 35# pack. I wouldn't consider doing it straight up, even back when my health was better.
They chose to put themselves in danger for unknown reasons. Their estates should pay all the costs incurred. And if the wives and kids don't end up with a dime, that's the price self-indulgent twits have to pay for doing things that they obviously know are dangerous and that they can get killed doing. And yet STILL have to go out and do this and risk all they own, and all their families' futures.
It's very simple.
My condolences to the families. But, these guys were exactly where they wanted to be doing exactly what they wanted to do and knew all the negative consequences. They made their own choices.
Not sure what he's doing, but I'm avoiding doing stupid things where someone needs to come pick my sorry butt off the side of a mountain. Leave the SAR people to extricate people from cars, and those who have difficulties while doing reasonable activities within reasonable limits.
========== They were still at the stage/age where they were immortal. Other people die but not them.
Most likely they have done similar things before, most likely many times, and got by. This time the cards fell the other way.
It could have been a beer keg in the fire....
Unka' George (George McDuffee) .............................. Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be "too clever by half." The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.
John Major (b. 1943), British Conservative politician, prime minister. Quoted in: Observer (London, 7 July 1991).
I'm glad I brought this up because it seems people are prone to doing stupid shit at this time of year. I include myself in this category. I'm gonna blame it on sunspots for now, but I wonder why people wander into the edge of danger in the worst of conditions. I know about the "because it was there" decree but maybe these guys just saw too many episodes of Jackass and thought it would be fun to get lost in a volcano and hope somebody else spent a million to bail them out. I'm pissed about this and it sounds like bad TV to me.
First of all, it is interesting that some lives seem so much more "valuable" than others. Search and rescue personnel not only run up large expenses but also often put their own lives at risk. Meanwhile, there are people dying in the streets whose lives could have been saved at rather trivial cost. And it is easy to say that the person in the street chose a lifestyle that put him at risk. But, exactly the same thing could be said about the mountain-climber. Actually, in the case of the mountain-climber it was probably a lot more of a free choice.
Consequently, I think the difference lies not so much in the person being rescued as in the rescuer. The rescue itself is a grand adventure. It allows the rescuer to feel he is going out and accomplishing some noble purpose. It is a challenge and a grand adventure in and of itself. And they get to do all of this at someone else's expense.
Then there is the tendency to say, "it's there, let's use it." As a simple example, a kid (just over 18) was attempting to ride a wreck of a motorcycle down a back road. The motorcycle had no brakes and he managed to hit a Forest Service pickup that was stopped in the middle of the road. He sailed over it and landed on his head. The driver of the pickup went to help the kid. His passenger called their boss. Meanwhile, the kid's mother showed up on the scene. She (a personal friend of mine) is a thoroughly resourceful and unflappable lady. She wiped some of the blood away, decided he probably had a concussion, loaded him in the car and headed for the nearest hospital, an hour's drive away. Meanwhile, the Forest Service supervisor called 911. And they dispatched a helicopter. The helicopter arrived about the same time the mother was marching the kid into the emergency room. They were, of course, furious that "their" patient was no longer there. They attempted to collect for the helicopter trip ($6000) from the kid's step-father.
I could easily tell a few more stories, but you get the idea. The answer to the question of why the rescue folks run up the bills they do: Because they can.
I have a little phrase for this that I call the "Self Inflicted Problem".
An SIP has three components;
1 - The negative consequences resulting from choosing that path are completely obvious.
2 - There are completely viable alternative courses of action.
3 - A choice of an alternative path that avoids the "bad" path can be freely chosen.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who suffer from SIPs.
There are helicopters involved and last I checked they are metallic. I use this group as a sounding board sometimes and contribute real knowledge from experience. An occasional Off Topic is fine whether it be taxes or politics or guns or diffs of opinion. It's a fun place to hang out and ask about issues with no big hammers over our heads. Anybody wanna buy a rivett 608 lathe bed? It is rusty but restorable Merry whatever to ya all and keep yer kitties dry
At least we are better than most. We do suffer the occasional and regular hemorrhages from those who cannot control their adolescent urges to rant, "It's just not fair", etc, etc, etc.
But, those are easily handled with filters, and then we keep the creme de la creme re: metalworking.
Even then, though, whilst talking about metalworking, it is okay and refreshing to pause and talk about the topic of the day. Then, in a few days, and a few posts later, move back on to metal topics.
We do not suffer the intolerable idiots that some newsgroups do who drone on and on and on and on and on about Bush and Iraq etc. I mean, we do, but those people are quickly filtered, and those who make meaningful and pertinent comments about metalworking bob to the top of the cesspool to cluster again and form a new island.
And, with the topic of metalworking, there's always a new question. Always a new frontier. Always a new slant. I love that about this newsgroup. Whoa! Maybe love is too strong a term, but I DO like it a lot.
Example:
Iggy's post re: The Army Rigger's Handbook
Tons of information for the clueless and the experienced, yet a whole new frontier of exploration.
So, keep up the chit chat. No problem.
We all know who the motomouths are regarding Iraq and Bush and who dis this newsgroup by their incessant prattle about those subjects. The absolutely clueless.
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