Search and Rescue, but at What Cost?

Dan Neil’s column “Rescue Me” is a thoughtful, contemplative take on the search-and-rescue issue (800 Words, Jan. 14). It’s gotten impossible in our “it’s never my fault” culture to ferret out the genuine rescue from the unnecessary one.

Year after year, the National Park Service has tales of inexperienced folks in their new Patagonia or Arc’teryx gear calling from mountaintops on their cellphones, asking to be rescued because they are too tired to make it down. There is a false security in outdoor clothing and cellphones and a mentality that says there is always someone there to bail us out. That “someone” is our tax dollars. Most search-and-rescue personnel are volunteers, but “someone” still pays for all of that gas in the helicopters and snowmobiles. Until there is a system in place (a type of bond or insurance) to make the inexperienced and ill-prepared bear some of the cost, “someone” will continue to pay.

Keri Scaggs

Pacific Palisades