S&R mission at Karamea raises questions of cost recovery, praises locator beacons
Heaphy Hills overlooks Mt Olympus (right) and the Lead Hills (left). Photo: Supplied.
A Search and Rescue mission at Karamea raises questions of cost recovery, praises locator beacons
A recent helicopter rescue in the Kahurangi National Park has left Clifton resident Franz Bettinger grateful for his locator beacon and has prompted discussion about rescue protocol and responsibility for costs.
Franz, aged 55, and a friend from Germany intended to cross the park by foot and kayak. They had traversed the Dragon’s Teeth, and while descending the 700 vertical meters from Gibbs Tops on the Wangapeka they stumbled and fell several times. To stop his fall, Franz grabbed a tree stump and ripped open his hand.
Despite his injury, the two men decided to go ahead with their trip as planned. The next day they collected an inflatable kayak and fresh supplies dropped by a helicopter near the Trevor Carter. Although the men checked reports on river flows before they left, the river was slower than anticipated and overnight it fell to precarious levels.
After a horrendous first day of shoving and pushing along they had only covered 10km instead of the 20km they had envisaged. The pair spent the night at Thor hut, and Franz’s hand was becoming hot, swollen and extremely painful.
“I could not open my hand any more and began to worry about the rest of our trip. In first daylight, I realised that I would not be able to use my hand even for stirring the coffee and I was worried about blood poisoning. This made our next decision easy. We set off the locator beacon, which my wife Amelie had borrowed from the helicopter pilot and stuffed into my pocket. After one hour, a huge helicopter arrived [dispatched from Nelson by the Rescue Coordination Centre NZ] with four people looking for us and I felt ashamed that I only had an infected hand and not a hole in my skull or an injured foot. But they took us and the gear; obviously they felt pity for us.”
Franz said the epic trip left him “burnt out with exhaustion and with not a drop of energy left.” He is adamant that his safe return was due to the locator beacon.
Search and Rescue (S&R) adviser and local branch secretary/treasurer Wouter de Maat agrees that everybody venturing out into the wilderness is well advised to carry a locator beacon.
“Locator beacons have most definitely saved many lives, even on simple tracks. If you are in the wopwops and someone has to walk to get help and then the helicopter has to locate you, it is much more difficult to find someone in time. The new locator beacons have a GPS system and the helicopter knows exactly the position of the person who set off the beacon. It’s dirt cheap to hire one for the Mobil Station in Takaka, and it can save your life. At least it gives you peace of mind, not just for yourself, but also for other people in your party. When people are delayed on their trip, we can set off the modern beacon and it beeps loudly at the other end and the person has one minute to switch it off. Then know that they are OK. Locator beacons can also save S&R volunteers a lot of time when going searching for someone who is lost or injured in the bush.”
Wouter is also aware of the costs involved in sending in a rescue helicopter.
“Who pays for it? You and I as taxpayers,” he said. “ACC pays for the rescue and it would have cost many thousands of dollars to pay for the Squirrel, the paramedics and the pilot. There are different opinions on whether ACC should pay for this or not. It is a difficult one and I don’t have an answer, but I hope in this case they made a sizeable donation to the Helicopter Trust.”
Assistant S&R co-ordinator for the Tasman Police, Russell Tucker, explained that there are two S&R scenarios, termed category I and II incidents. Category I is co-ordinated by the police, whilst category II operations, arising from someone activating a distress beacon, are the responsibility of the Rescue Co-ordination Centre. The centre is responsible for co-ordinating all major maritime and aviation S&R missions termed Category II incidents within New Zealand’s S&R region.
Russell Tucker said that there was no protocol for prioritising distress calls. All were treated as mayday or emergency calls and there was a general agreement to go and investigate any beacon call. Cost recovery from individuals proved difficult, he said.
“We normally don’t go for costs. The moment we start charging, people’s lives are at risk as people who cannot afford it may wait days for a person to turn up before they let us know they are missing.” However, he added, “In some cases some people push the social conscience a long, long way and spoil the system.”
Organisations such as Forest and Bird and the tramping club hold locator beacons for their own members. The Mobil petrol station hires them out.
Ina Holst
