You should fine them!

With the whole Covid thing going around at the moment, we are in Lockdown 3. The official government advice is that you can exercise outside with another person who is not in your family. However, you must exercise within your locality.

The "locality" has not been well defined which has caused a bit of an issue recently in terms of just how far can you go in order to exercise. Evidently we are all trusted to be intelligent and use our common sense. This has resulted in pretty much everyone being an idiot and seeing how much they can get away with- as seems to be the case in covidious Albion. 

I hope I'm not talking out of turn here, if I am, I'll be told pretty soon and will take this down...

 

Recently there was a Mountain Rescue situation that has been covered fairly well by the media (in that it has been plastered all over the news) that 4 people got lost in deep snow on Bleaklow looking for a plane wreck. They called MR and were rescued from pretty inhospitable conditions. 

The subsequent facebook post was shared more than 900 times, and commented on nigh on 1000 times pretty much turned into an echo chamber of "you should fine them" or "you should have left them there" or "they should be made to pay for the cost of the rescue". 

This brought a few things to mind. For starters, I am not going to get into the rights and wrongs of the situation in which these people found themselves in. Whether or not there were rules in place to be broken is not my point of discussion. However, lets think about a few things:

1) They should be charged for the rescue. 

Right. First off, if you DON'T know, then you should. In the UK Mountain Rescue is entirely voluntary. There are NO paid members of MR anywhere in the UK. A rescue will cost precisely NOTHING to the people who are rescued. Teams do not get back at the end of a shout and sit down working out how much petrol was burned, what consumables were lost, how many person hours were used at a billing per each person. No. They get back, work out what needs to be replaced/repaired, get some stats on who turned up and how long we were on scene for, and then get ready for the next one. 

Ok- there is a bit more stats work done at higher levels, but it is NOT to work out what our billable time is. Asking for a rescuee to pay for their rescue is pretty much meaningless in the UK. Equally, paying the rescuers is pointless as we don't get paid. Donations are of course welcomed, but that is it.

Which brings me onto 

2) You should have left them there.

I know this comment is (perhaps) kind of made tongue in cheek and is not a serious thought, but rather, a throwaway comment on a facebook post, but I feel it is worth calling out here. 

MR is made up of volunteers. They get called out, they go. At no point do they sit there and judge "does this person deserve to be rescued?" I suspect that the people that do think that are indeed, sat on their armchairs at home, judging from behind a computer screen.
 

At no point do they bash through a load of snow and ice, work their way through gnarly conditions to find someone and then say "actually, nah. I think you deserve everything you've got". turn around and then leave. It just isn't going to happen. 

Equally, if there is someone in need on the hill and the call comes through, I suspect the response isn't going to be "are you nearly dead yet? No. Ok, call us back when you are, then we'll think about it". 

If there is someone in trouble at 5pm in the snow with a windchill of -12, it is simple common sense to get on the hill and get to them sooner rather than later when their phone battery is dead and they've got split up. In that case, you're searching for 4 people across a LOT of land which is going to take a LOT more time and be a LOT less comfortable for the rescuers, let alone the rescuees.

Before you say "you should have left them there" just think about what you're saying. It goes against what MR actually stands for. 

 3) You should fine them. 

Well. I'm not going to get into the whys and wherefores of this- however, it does carry an interesting issue. If you have someone on the hill who is in trouble and they KNOW they are going to get fined if they call Mountain Rescue, what are they going to do? 

Try and get out of the situation? Ok, fine, but if you're already in a bad situation, decision processes are going to be impaired, everyone gets colder faster, and before you know it, what was a simple- "oh shit, walk off" situation, turns into a pretty big multi-team search and 4 body stretcher off affair- because someone didn't want to pay a fine. That is a pretty big burden- especially if you're on the team and you realise that lives could have been saved if they weren't worried about being caught. 

Mountain Rescue is not here to catch people and fine them, they're here to rescue them. That's why its called Mountain Rescue, not Mountain Debt Collectors.

OK, so perhaps the casualties shouldn't be up there in the first place - but set the precedent of fining people who call MR, and then put competent hill goers in that situation who just happen to have a bad day, and you've got yourself a bit of an issue. I suspect that teams would rather have a fast, early dispatch and walk off than a protracted body search with not such a happy ending. 

No, I don't know what the answer is, but the people who are hoping that a donation was made are probably those with their heads screwed on right. 

Mountain rescue is voluntary and wouldn't exist and couldn't run without the donations of money, and indeed time from a lot of people.  

In fact, you can help Glossop MRT here.