Boy Scout fined $25K for Mt. Washington rescue

[boardman]

I don't think this is the kind of person who should be slapped with this kind of punishment. There are many more egregious bumblies who deserve to be made an example.

Teen fined $25,000 for cost of NH mountain rescue
By HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press Writer

Friday, July 17, 2009
(07-17) 14:27 PDT Concord, N.H. (AP) --

A Massachusetts teenager who spent three nights alone on Mount Washington in April after he sprained an ankle and veered off marked trails has been fined more than $25,000 for the cost of his rescue.

Scott Mason had been praised for utilizing his Eagle Scout skills — sleeping in the crevice of a boulder and jump-starting fires with hand sanitzer gel. But authorities say he wasn't prepared for the conditions he encountered and shouldn't have set out on such an ambitious hike.

"Yes, he'd been out there in July when you could step across the brooks. And people have been out there in winter in hard-packed snow. But with these spring conditions, it was soft snow, it was deep snow," said Fish and Game Maj. Tim Acerno.

Acerno said he believes Mason's fine is the largest ever sought under a 9-year-old New Hampshire law that allows lost hikers and climbers to be charged for rescue costs. Mason's rescue was particularly expensive because the helicopters the state typically used were unavailable, and a helicopter from Maine had to be brought in, Acerno said.

Mason, 17, of Halifax, Mass., had planned to spend one day hiking 17 miles in the New Hampshire mountains but ended up lost after he hurt his ankle and decided to take a shortcut. The shortcut led him into rising water and deep snow caused by unseasonably warm weather.

Mason was negligent in continuing up the mountain with an injury and veering off the marked path, Acerno said. Negligence, he said, is based on judging what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

"When I twist my ankle, I turn around and come down. He kept going up," Acerno said.

"It was his negligence that led to him getting into that predicament," he said. "Once he was in that predicament, yes, that's what we praise him for — he used his Boy Scout skills, and that's why he's still alive."

Several states, including neighboring Maine and Vermont, have rescue repayment laws similiar to New Hampshire, though others tend to be more lenient. In Washington state, a bill that would have created a reimbursement system with fines capped at $500 never even made it out of committee this year. In New Hampshire, however, lawmakers made it even easier to charge for rescues last year when they changed the law to allow fines for those who acted negligently instead of the harder to prove standard of recklessness.

New Hampshire officials have estimated that they could seek reimbursement in about 40 of the 140 or so rescues it typically handles each year. The money goes to the Fish and Game department's rescue fund. In most cases, hikers pay a few hundred dollars.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, there were 131 missions that cost $175,320, Acerno said. He did not know how many of them resulted in fines.

Mason's family said they would not comment on the bill, which was mailed July 10. Mason has until August 9 to pay the bill; he could also take the state to court to contest the fine.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz0LoNTa78L

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[PWDR8S]

How to turn off potential nature seekers from wandering into the woods.
or
How to force sheeple to stay within the lines.
or
This is f*&^%g ridiculous to fine a youngster... Should apply to idiots only... at least this kid had BC savvy up to a point and had an honest mistake.


Will they fine the dead guy from Canada? Their family? How will they threaten the dead guy to get their money... "We'll send Vito and Rocko to break your legs!"

While it's a good law to have to recoup some of the expenses, selectively enforcing is NOT an option! Or take it off the books.

[bucksaw]

I find it strange that a good number of the responding services are volunteer yet the state still feels the need to extract such am enormous fee.

When is the search/rescue crew's going to get paid?

[PWDR8S]

Is that a hairpiece?

[RR]

I'm waiting for the back story before I get too excited.

[stoneman]

So did this kid's friends or family or someone he knows request a search & rescue at some point? Or did the authorities just asume he needed one after checking an itinerary or something?

[Sledhaulingmedic]

Originally Posted by PWDR8S

Will they fine the dead guy from Canada? Their family? How will they threaten the dead guy to get their money... "We'll send Vito and Rocko to break your legs!"

I think it'll have to be Viteau and Rocqueaux.

Seriously, this is over the top.

[jshefftz]

Originally Posted by stoneman

So did this kid's friends or family or someone he knows request a search & rescue at some point?

Yes. (I even ended up randomly having dinner with the kid's father, just as the kid was about to go through Night #3. The father certainly wanted his son to be searched for.)

Anyway, I looked up the reg since I figured the actual text had to say more about what merits having to pay for rescue costs. I mean, the kid's planned route was absolutely impossible as a daytrip given both the time of year and the time of day he started. But then again, compared to the Harvard PhD students who glissaded into a crevasse / glide crack, and the Canadians who attempted the world's first above-treeline self-rescue via Grand Theft Auto, his culpability is relatively mild. (The history of stupidity on Mt Washington sets a very high standard!)

However, the entire reg is basically just a single sentence:
"Notwithstanding RSA 153-A:24, any person determined by the department to have acted negligently in requiring a search and rescue response by the department shall be liable to the department for the reasonable cost of the
department's expenses for such search and rescue response."
The full text is here, but the only add'l material is just administrative stuff:
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/.../206-26-bb.htm

BTW, the referenced RSA 153-A:24 is an older reg that pertains only to
charging for rescue when:
-- operating a boat/vehicle/plane while drunk or on drugs (hopefully Gu doesn't count);
-- taking hostages or threatening violence; or,
-- "Recklessly or intentionally creates a situation requiring an emergency
response."
Oddly enough though, under such clearly beyond-the-pale circumstances, cost recovery is capped at $10,000 (as compared to the current $25,000 for the kid charged under the other reg).
Full text here:
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/...a/153-a-24.htm

[TuaGuy]

I'm wondering if there is indeed cause to pause in the rush to judgement, if there is more to "the rest of the story". On the face of it, this appears to have been handled poorly, to say the least, and calls into question the judgement of F and G management. Where's the 25,000.00 line I cross, as careful as I try to be, when I go BC? Again, on the face of it, what's reasonable seems to be a casualty here.

[jshefftz]

Personally, I think that kid really messed up this hike, even before he got to the trailhead.
But that’s not the legal standard here.
Rather, the standard is whether he “acted negligently” which is open to a wide range of interpretation in a hiking context. I mean, just what is negligent hiking?
Contrast that with the standard that was in place from June 1999 until July 2008 that allowed cost recovery only for a hiker who "Recklessly [...] creates a situation requiring an emergency response." (Well, that and taking hostages.)
The use of the word “reckless” in the old standard seemed to reserve cost recovery only for truly egregious incidents, as opposed to the more typical incompetence seen in the Presidentials (or any mountain that is close to large urban populations).
Given the difficulty for the state of bringing a “negligent hiking” action to court, I suspect they will just reach a settlement for a much lower amount.

[jshefftz]

Just noticed that an update is available:
http://www.wmur.com/news/20120862/detail.html
http://www.wmur.com/video/20120997/index.html

Three especially interesting items:

1. Contrary to what some other internet peanut galleries have claimed, the rounded-off figure of the state's $25,000 demand does not cast doubt on the precision with which rescue costs were calculated, since . . . it's actually not a $25,000 demand, and was instead rounded off only in media reports. (The video of the letter shows the demand calculated out to the penny.)

2. How can NH confiscate a MA driver's license?

3. His claim about "flash flooding" is incorrect, as it was instead constant and entirely predictable fast-running and overflowing streams from snowmelt; footage from that same weekend in a nearby location:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jshefftz...44859575337490
http://picasaweb.google.com/jshefftz...44905993600146
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujKGXe2f7X4

4. He'd already voluntarily given $1,000 (although unclear whether to the state or nfp SAR).

[TuaGuy]

Thanks for the beta, story still to develop? First, kudos to the scout. At 18, he seems to be stepping up, as big time as he can, whatever the faults. I hope that his arguments to the powers that be in reducing/eliminating the fine don't get picked up as precedent by some idiot's lawyer as a means of getting said idiot off of paying for what should have been a Darwin Award moment.

I thought about posing the question, when does help kick in, and at what cost, but thought better of it and went back to the core: prepare in all ways, tech up as you can, but in the end, you have only you to rely on. "When you play the odds, you have to survive not beating them."-Aron Rolston, quoting an avy instructor, Between a Rock and a Hard Place

[jshefftz]

Good overview of the recent regulatory change here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/us/29rescue.html

Financial background to the change -- see pdf pp. 85-86 (native document page numbering 77-78):
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/lba/PDF/FG_2007p.pdf

Interesting article here:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ma..._place_to_die/
Excerpt:
"LAST YEAR, THE NEW HAMPSHIRE FISH AND GAME Department, national forest, AMC, and other groups assisted in 164 incidents, about 75 involving injured or lost hikers. Search and rescue missions in 2007 cost the state $150,000, plus thousands of volunteer hours. About $42,000 of that was spent aiding people who were later deemed "negligent." Under a New Hampshire law that took effect in June, hikers who fall into that category and refuse to pay rescue costs can lose their licenses to drive, fish, and hunt. The definition of "negligent hiker" may be open to interpretation, but [Todd] Bogardus [search and rescue leader with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department] says he knows one when he rescues one. If a mountain outing goes awry in the Whites, he gets called - in the dead of night, in rain and snow, in temperatures cold enough to freeze skin in minutes. "It's my job," he says flatly. "When there's no explanation for an accident other than fate, those are hard to explain. But it's frustrating when somebody was aware of a substantial danger and disregarded it. Something that was so avoidable." For example, he says, hikers who do not tell anyone where they are going, ignore weather reports and admonitions from rangers, or knowingly lack adequate clothing, food, water, and survival gear."

Also, funny reference here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=7UQ...esult&resnum=3

Overall though, I'd rather pay $25,234.65 and live than pay $3,175 to die:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n2757021.shtml
(Amazingly, this "school" is still in business -- the FAQ has no mention of this incident, but does specify that sunglasses are *NOT* allowed. In the desert, really.)

[bucksaw]

Originally Posted by jshefftz

assisted in 164 incidents, about 75 involving injured or lost hikers. Search and rescue missions in 2007 cost the state $150,000, plus thousands of volunteer hours.

the state's calculation is that each search and rescue would on average cost around 1000 dollars. the 25K sounds over the top.

[surf88]

Ouch! Thats expensive.
Some one should create a SAR team following the buisness model of AAA. Where you pay a membership fee ahead of time, and then your covered for SAR/recovery expenses.