Free Automated Rescue Notification System

[tgtaylor]

I just received this from one of my hiking groups. It could be of use when traveling in the back country.

http://www.IfIAmNotBack.com

[ic-racer]

I suspect one would pay for that service. I don't see any data on that site (so I had to look it up myself.) I suspect that injury or death while traveling in car/SUV to the point of hiking departure, is much more common than hiking injury.

Hiking injury 4.6 per 100,000 population. (http://www.wemjournal.org/wmsonline/?request=get-document&issn=1080-6032&volume=019&issue=02&page=0091#i1080-6032-019-02-0091-t03)
Auto death about 20 per 100,000 population. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/injury99-05/injury99-05_fig1.png

[Paul Kierstead]

Jeez, ic-racer, considering how many more people drive then hike, and even those who do both get in their auto a lot more frequently than they hike, that makes hiking a shockingly dangerous proposition, at least for injury.

[tgtaylor]

The service, which is expected to be up by August, 2010, is free. Although designed with the long distance backcountry hiker in mind, I suspect that it could work equally well for the long distance driver.

[Vaughn]

I am a bit leery of depending on such things (along with cell phones. etc) for help.

For example, those who would get stuck driving a 2 wheel drive vehicle, usually just get stuck further out in the boonies if driving a 4WD. Knowing that someone would come looking for you, encourages riskier behavior.

Search and rescue organizations are being called out to respond to cell phone calls for help for relatively trivial things these days. If people know they can count on help by merely dialing up a number of their cell phone -- or with one of these services mentioned in the OP, then you will have even more complete idiots out where they should not be.

Personally I think the situation calls for one of two things. 1) if you go out into a wilderness area, there should be no rescues -- you are on your own, or 2) the entire cost of the rescue is born by those being rescued.

Vaughn

[Jim Michael]

This is similar to filing a flight plan. If you don't close your flight plan within 30 minutes of your scheduled arrival time then that starts the motion for initiating a rescue. Lots of folks forget to close the flight plans and I suppose this would be a similar problem with this service. Also, if something happens to you, say you slip and fall off a cliff as happened to one photographer recently, you may be difficult to find if no one knows your coordinates. The photographer that fell off the cliff had a Spot tracker and that was credited with saving his life. It has different modes of operation, allowing you to send someone a help message (like if you had car trouble) without alerting authorities for a full blown rescue. It also has a tracking mode that sends a position report every few minutes which folks can see on a dedicated web page.

[r.e.]

I live on a very big, rugged island in the North Atlantic where one of the biggest concerns is that too many people are not using the available electronic gear, at sea and in the bush, that could saves their lives, and where, as a consequence, more money is spent on search and rescue than is necessary and more lives are being needlessly, and far too frequently, lost.

Here, at least, the proposition that the government, which has the search and rescue aircraft, helicopters and vessels, and the trained personnel to man them and carry out rescues both offshore and on land, should cede its role in rescue to volunteers, let alone the proposition that those rescued should be responsible for paying the cost of their rescue, would be greeted with utter incredulity.

[tgtaylor]

During the summer of 2008 I went on a 165 mile hike on the JMT (from Reds to Whitney Portal). Along the trail I ran into a ranger who respondced to two calls about 2 weeks earlier. The first was from a hiker who was camped above the tree line. The ranger hiked out that night and foundf that the hiker was suffering from accute appendicitis and called in a helicopter evacuation. The hospital reported in the press that the hiker would not have survived if he got to the hospital just a couple of hours later than he did. The second call was from a PCT hiker who got stuck in stream
but got out before SAR got there and left.

[PenGun]

The satellite notifiers work well. You can find em' for $150 or so.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2003/2003-07-07-01.asp

If you are seriously out there these are what you need. Gonna get one for my bike tour next year. Vancouver Island the hard way.

[tgtaylor]

A quick note on who pays for the rescue.

Back in 2008 that was the question on a hiking blog. Specifically, who pays for a rescue on the JMT/PCT? To get an answer, I called up the Inyo National Forest thru which the trail run. The Forest service responded that all rescue's outside the boundaries of national parks are conducted by the county sheriff in which the call for help originated. So if you were in Inyo county when you called, the SAR are of the Inyo County Sheriff's department would be the respondent. If, on the other hand you were in national park, then the NP has their own SAR which would respond. Both county and NP can request assistance from the CHP which also have helicopters and could respond. As far as charging for the rescue, the Forest Service said that they would never charge but then again it's the county sheriff that is the respondent.

So I called the Inyo County Sheriff's Department and asked them. They said that they bill the county of residence of those rescued for reimbursement which is then paid out of the counties Emergency Services fund which is tax based. However is the rescue is necessitated by your own negligence, then you could be billed for the costs.

Finally, you can also purchase "Travelers Insurance" which will cover medical evacuations.

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

I've been around a lot of rescues in the mtns - everything from heart attacks to people
being thrown from horses - plus encountered a few fatal incidents. The biggest problem is with groups - Boy Scouts, Outward Bound, etc - inexperienced guides with
too many kids. Cell phone coverage is extremely poor even in the Sierras, and the PCT
and Muir trail are like crowded freeways compared to a lot of the backcountry, where
one can get quite isolated, especially in the Fall. But I would have questions about how
reliable any automated service would be, and whether it was battery or weather
dependent, and especially if it was abused - would anyone bother to respond? There
is indeed a need for rescues, and they are more common than most people realize.
I'm a bit skeptical about people who wander around high altititude in Oct wearing
sneakers and T-shirts, but it happens. I've certainly had my share of vacations spoiled
by having to haul some unprepared person out of the high country. But not everyone
who wants to enjoy the outdoors is either adequately in shape or carrying proper gear
for the unpredictabilities of mtn weather. The desert can be worse. So anything that
actually helps a rescue crew pinpoint where someone is would potentially save
millions of dollars annually in search efforts.

[Jim Michael]

Drew, using Spot as an example, the device id is associated with the owner who had to set up an account presumably using valid criteria such as a credit card number. I'm not sure what might be construed as abuse, unless someone used the 911 button to summon help because he forgot an opener for the Perrier. The Spot folks are going to alert authorities with the reported coordinates, and it would be up to them to decide whether your actions were akin to reporting a false emergency.

As far as the reliability of the service, it's going to depend on the underlying technology. The satellite communications used for the emergency signaling devices are pretty dependable. Other systems that use cell phones or amateur radio frequencies (APRS based) are pretty much line of site to a receiving station and thus pretty much useless in remote areas. GPS has had a problem with tree cover in the past, so attenuation of signal might be a concern.

[domaz]

Jeez, ic-racer, considering how many more people drive then hike, and even those who do both get in their auto a lot more frequently than they hike, that makes hiking a shockingly dangerous proposition, at least for injury.

Auto injury rates are something like 922 per 100,000 (calculating based on 304 million population) (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/kwm064v2/TBL1), comparing apples to apples it makes driving a shockingly dangerous proposition.