Questions and reports related to Sierra Nevada current and forecast conditions, as well as general precautions and safety information. Trail conditions, fire/smoke reports, mosquito reports, weather and snow conditions, stream crossing information, and more.
wildrose wrote:
He did say, as far as he knows, no SAR charges people for being rescued, and that includes Yosemite SAR program.
Yosemite SAR will charge for medical services provided, and bill your insurance if you have it. And, with our team, if we arrive and the person refuses help, we walk away - we do not threaten to charge them. Otherwise he is correct.
I wouldn't expect anyone to be charged.
We are also called upon to search for missing children and Alzheimers sufferers, and to track felons on the lam in the wilderness.
Thanks for this thread. We usually leave a detailed itinerary. This year, in response to your post, we have added detailed identifying information and a photo. We'll leave it with a family member to email to the forest service if we are more than 24 hours late (a call to the rangers first, of course). With the photo and the info, we'll be much more easily found.
bheiser1 wrote:[
What insurance does the SAR team charge? Health insurance? in the way an ambulance service would?
Good question -- I bet most health insurers would refuse to cover SAR.
Who does cover the cost of SAR? I know the rescuers volunteer their time (and deserve a Purple Heart for it!), but what about the helicopters, etc? I guess the NPS.
As someone who would make a bad "rescuee" (I change my mind on the fly too much to leave a meaningful detailed itinerary), I have to say I'd gladly pay if it were my life that was being saved. Who wouldn't?
bheiser1 wrote:[
What insurance does the SAR team charge? Health insurance? in the way an ambulance service would?
Good question -- I bet most health insurers would refuse to cover SAR.
Who does cover the cost of SAR? I know the rescuers volunteer their time (and deserve a Purple Heart for it!), but what about the helicopters, etc? I guess the NPS.
You cover the cost of SAR. Usually the county sheriff's office runs the SAR team. Any moneys for helicopters or other resources comes from them and the helo is usually the lion's share of the cost. Volunteers buy their own equipment, usually, and for searches, we get a mileage reimbursement and sometimes a sandwich or burrito for our trouble (and a nice thank you when we're all done). NPS SAR teams are paid for their services and get all their equipment bought for them, but the money comes from the gov'ment of course. Your tax dollars at work.
It usually works this way - when your county residents come to our county and get lost, we'll go looking for them, so you (the local SAR) will do the same when our county residents visit your county and get lost.
YOSAR will charge the MEDICAL insurance, for MEDICAL services rendered by the MEDICAL staff on their SAR team (which counties don't typically have on their teams - unless you get paramedics volunteering). Same as if you visit the clinic in Yosemite Village and get treatment. Of course they can't charge for the searching and rescuing.
In the days of paper maps, publishers would seed city maps with fake alleys to detect copyright infringers. I wonder if this is done for the same purpose.
quentinc wrote:Allegedly dictionary publishers do or used to do the same thing with fake words. That should be a felony!
LOL!!!
That reminds of some creative GIS work I did for the Forest Service. Right before I retired I was editing an annotation layer in GIS -- entering all the place names. Feeling whimsical and somewhat bored with the monotonous editing, I noticed several unnamed meadows and lakes in the wilderness. So I just created names for them. My dog has a meadow named after her, my wife a lake, daughter a meadow and several other friends and family members. Nothing official, of course. I thought no one would use those names, as they are unofficial and not on a public layer.
Imagine my surprise a few years later when a wilderness map was published on a non-FS website using some very familiar names...
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Log off and get outdoors!
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