SAR delayed "because they have a beacon"?!

Just realised there is a simple quick fix to prevent such a "delay" decision by any SAR party: Explicitly instruct your friend when alarming rescue parties to tell them that you are NOT carrying a beacon. Solved. Of course that may be a lie, but in the case that you are overdue and can either not activate your beacon or the beacon is malfunctioning, that lie causes zero harm, as it only ensures that SAR is started as it should be; and if you actually manage to activate the beacon later after SAR has already started, that makes their job easier as well and also doesn't cause any harm. If rescue organisations start playing games like that, they force people to play games as well. That's not a good thing, and something people making such decisions should be aware of. "Delay SAR because they have a beacon" - what is next? "Because it is good weather"? "Because they have done that trip many times before"? Great. If someone is reported as overdue, that should be taken exactly equally serious as someone activating their beacon - by both rescue parties and tramping party, of course! Matt

Police will always assess the situation and then respond accordingly. It is often the case that the party is seen to be strong and well equipped so it may be only a case of waiting a day or so for them to walk out. I am very aware of this myself when I fill out my intensions that when I put down that I an carrying EPIRB, it means that a search will probably not be commenced on my due out date. If I havn't activated the EPIRB then I am probably OK and just need a little time. Mind you this works both ways. I know of searches that have been activated early because someone in the party may be weak or the weather looks like it will close in. I recall and incident when I was holidaying at the beach and we received a knock onthe door at about 7pm in the evening. It was someone who was looking for a 4 year old child who had been missing for about 4 or 5 hours. They were not concerned and were just going looking for her. My advise to them was CALL THE POLICE NOW! There was only 2-3 hours of daylight left and if a proper search were to be mounted then every minute of daylight was essential. They were supprised at my advise but took it. Luckily the child was located soon after. What I am getting at, is that the Police will assess the situation at the time and act accordingly, you don't make that desicion for them. In the case you mention, they felt it was likely that the party were OK, until the EPIRB was activated. In the case I mention I suspect the Police would have prefered to know the child was missing sooner rather than have the parents knocking on doors themselves. As you say, there are some senarios where, say you are unable to activate the EPIRB. As you say, unlikely, but I am sure they will come into the equasion. It is also another reason why tramping parties must be self sufficient. Trampers have tramped safely for generations without EPIRBs. They are not a reason to take short cuts.

I just have to add that delaying searches is nothing new. It often happens, especially if the party is strong and well equipped and especially after rain as it is likely parties are just delayed by rain. I recall being a day late out from a trip in Aspiring National Park in the 1970s. We were stuck after heavy rain and then came out the next day after the river went down. It turned out that there were about 80 overdue trampers in the National Park that weekend. The authorities were not concerned at all, they were just waiting for them all to come out when they were ready, which they did. No need to dash around in helicopters and panic.

I think many trampers have been in a situation where they have become trapped in some way (by rivers or snow) and have missed their due date. This happened to me and a friend a couple of years ago; we were camped on our last night of an 8 night trip and ready to head over our last pass to the car the next morning when we unexpectedly had a lot of snow overnight. In the morning we decided not to risk the pass and walk out another way (2 more days in the opposite direction). We knew we were going to be overdue but it was the safest option. When we got to cellphone reception we were a full day late and although the family member who had our intentions had sent it on to the local police the night before, the police had made the decision NOT to send a chopper straight away and to wait at least an extra day. This decision was based on the fact that we were experienced and not likely to take unnecessary risks & took into consideration the weather bomb of the last couple of days - it was obviously the right decision and we made it back just in time to stop a SAR operation beginning the next morning. We had no beacon on this trip - but in my opinion this should be irrelevant - If we did have a beacon nothing really changes in this situation... we still would have walked out the other way and we still would have been overdue - leaving Police to make the call on a possible search. I think a situation where trampers have become trapped is far more common than one in which they have become injured and unable to set off their beacon - you have to give Police and SAR the respect they deserve in these situations - they are not likely to make stupid decisions given their level of experience in these kinds of events.

So that is common practise? That's nuts! That means someone who does less to be safe gets better and more immediate help than someone who carries a beacon and other equipment. I fail to accept that there should be any logic in that, and it does NOT help to convince people to equip themselves well either. I don't care if that is standard practise, it doesn't make sense, and I still think it's reckless. That makes my decision absolutely firm NOT to mention having a beacon to anyone, and I might even intentionally understate a lot of the rest of the equipment that we are carrying as well for the same reason in the future. I'm not going to comment on the behaviour of the people in the example with the child. I don't care what other reckless people are out there and how stupid they behave in the bush or mountains. I set a "chopper time" with a friend for a reason; and it's not the time I expect to be back, but there is a reasonable time buffer as well. When that passes, I want action NOW - the exact same immediate action they seem to be taking for ill equipped and inexperienced people. I think that's perfectly reasonable. If they treat ill equipped and inexperienced people better, well, then I'll have to present myself as that. This has very little to do with being self sufficient, experienced or well equipped. If you have broken some bones, that can't be fixed with "self sufficiency", and you need help - regardless of the method used to determine that you are in trouble, be it via beacon or via an overdue report. Of course you need to set your "chopper time" in a reasonable way according to the trip you go on. If you plan to be out by 2PM on a day walk, you don't instruct your friend to call the police at 3PM already; and if you go on a multi day trip, you set the "chopper time allowance" much longer than on a day trip. The time you add to when you expect to be out can't be a fixed length of time, it needs to be a percentage of the expected trip duration. Setting this overdue time is a difficult task as it is in itself, and always a compromise between risking an unnecessary search and having to wait too long in case of a real incident. If rescue parties add their own additional waiting time on top of that, that means that trampers would be well advised to set their "reporting back" time rather early, at the risk of causing a search by being out later than planned. This mechanism between the strategies of trampers and search parties can easily become inflationary - trampers setting tighter and tighter deadlines to compensate for the delay time that SAR may add, and SAR adding even more delay time because they know trampers are doing that. That's in no one's interest. There should be an accepted protocol how this is managed, e.g. a simple formula that determines when someone is "overdue", depending on the duration of the trip and other factors. For a day trip, overdue can mean a few hours later than planned. For a multi day or longer trip, that tolerance will logically be much higher, and a day or two extra may be in order. Being a day late on an eight day trip I personally wouldn't consider overdue. But back to what the main issue here is: The influence of carrying a beacon on the decision to delay SAR activities. If the same delay decision would be made if the party did NOT have a beacon, that would be acceptable. But in this case, the beacon was used AS A REASON not to start SAR right away. That's what I am criticising. It's all good if police and other parties make decisions based on circumstances to an extent, but good equipment can simply not be used as a reason to delay a search compared to what the decision would be if the party would be less well equipped. That's like not calling 111 after a crash "because the car had airbags". Matt

Every situation is different, but as my trip shows the same decision generally is made whether the party has a beacon or not - we didn't have one and they did the same thing... I think there is a difference between a 'due date' and as you call it a 'chopper time' - a due date is the date your friends/family are expecting you to be out - a 'chopper time' is something altogether different. Your 'intentions' are exactly that... ie what you intend on doing (day 1 = this, day 2 = that etc) It is of course merely a rough indication of your plan, which is all any tramper can really give anybody. I think it is important to remember that tramping is inherently risky and although we are lucky to have SAR available in this country wherever we are, I don't think we can demand they act however we tell them to (remembering also that some of these rescuers are volunteers...). Tramping into remote areas is a personal choice - being picked up by a chopper at a time of your choosing is certainly not a right... It's just not your decision to make. All you can do is equip yourself as best you can and make good decisions. If I could afford a beacon I'd have one...

Well, seemingly in this case the decision to delay WAS indeed based on the party carrying a beacon, so its presence did actually influence SAR parties to delay action. You are right about the "due date" and "chopper time" difference. Maybe that's where the inefficient communication starts already - again, there should be a standard that everyone understands, so different people involved don't "measure time" in different ways. I don't think you can interpret what I am saying above as expecting SAR parties to compensate for the inherent risk in tramping, or me expecting to have the "right to be picked up by a chopper", that's twisting my words. I am just pointing out that making SAR decisions in case of overdue trampers dependent on whether or not they have a beacon is without any logic, since the beacon in your pocket is no equipment that helps you get through a night better, and more importantly there are real reasons why it might not be activated despite or even because of you being in severe trouble. The beacon can not be a reason to delay a search; starting a search later than you would if the person who was reported overdue wouldn't have a beacon is unlogical and therefore unprofessional in my view, and on top of that extremely unfair. Don't mix this scenario up with different ones. If someone gets reported overdue, it may make sense to make search decisions dependent on all sorts of things like weather or terrain, but their equipment shouldn't even figure. SAR parties shouldn't even ask that question in my opinion. The only exception I find acceptable is where they have to priorise several searches that they can't do simultaneously due to lack of resources. Of course, that's my view of things, and I'm aware now that many people seem to think differently. I and my backup contact will communicate with SAR parties accordingly in the case we should ever need help out there. Matt PS: If you can't afford a beacon but would like to carry one, you could rent one, at least for longer and / or more risky trips. That's what we currently do. It's around 10 dollars a day, and there are several places that have them.

All I was saying is that SAR tend to make good decisions and that they take all relevant available information into account. In this particular situation of the three in Arthur's Pass it seems that the 05/04 was the morning after they were expected out, the call was made not to go in that morning and to wait a little longer. At 2:45 that afternoon they did set off their beacon and were promptly rescued. I think its totally reasonable for SAR to take into account whether or not a party has a beacon. And this situation to me shows that it was an acceptable decision to wait. I don't think anything in this report indicates that if they didn't have a beacon they wud've been in there straight away. Again, we don't have all the information... PS - yea have hired before but still not always affordable for a poor student!

Hello. I wonder if this is confusion between due date and panic date. There's not much info in that writeup, and I'd bet the decision makers were going on more context. You could probably email to Graeme Kates and ask about why they made that decision --- he seems pretty open about explaining these things. It doesn't bother me to read this. If it'd simply said "they were well equipped" without also mentioning they also had an EPIRB, I think it would have been completely acceptable to read that a search hadn't been launched immediately, and I think that's exactly what would have happened. That they had an EPIRB that hadn't been activated simply would have supported the existing decision even more, especially if you know a party has sufficient food and gear. If someone's in trouble, especially when tramping, chances are they've already died or they've stabilised. Regardless, it's unlikely that searchers could be more help than they could be if an extra day is waited, unless a precise evac position is known, which it probably isn't. If there's reason to believe the group's inexperienced or ill-equipped to hunker down, the numbers would leap up, but it sounds like the group was known to be likely to be safe in this respect, so it didn't happen. Given how frequently groups are overdue and how many unnecessary rescue operations would be launched with limited resources if they were always followed up immediately regardless of assessment, I think it makes sense to weigh things out and allow some slack.