On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Christopher G. Madden < maddencg_at_earthlink.net> wrote: > > Summary, > > We are not impressed. > In a similar vein, the Sheriff's Office in the Wenatchee, WA area had a hiker who was injured and activated the 911 button. According to my source the SPOT center could not figure out which SAR agency was the correct one to begin a search until quite a lot of time had elapsed. This may be a significantly larger issue than the SPOT people initially thought. SAR is relatively advanced in some geographic areas but either primitive or non-existent in others. Even in the USA. And even when there is an SAR agency it might be difficult to determine who they are or how to contact them. Many of them in the USA are keyed to 911 calls on the telephone and it can be very difficult to contact the 911 operators if you are not local. In my area, for instance, the 911 operators are a non-governmental agency that contracts to the police and fire services and is listed in the telephone directory as MACC (Multi Agency Communications Center). Some rural police departments don't even have local numbers that are answered by anyone after normal office hours; the recordings say "if you have an emergency dial 911". In the USA the only national SAR is the USCG for mariners. Otherwise it's generally individual police agencies which, themselves, face jurisdictional problems. Many jurisdiction borders follow the crests of mountain ranges, the centers of rivers and the middle of lakes so it can take some time to determine who is responsible for the rescue even before they scramble the individual personnel. SPOT needs to work to develop contacts within the SAR community so their people can quickly determine who to contact. SPOT needs to work to pull all this together so that more countries - especially those dependent upon tourism - will create SAR systems that can work with SPOT and other SAR agencies in a cooperative manner. This is the only real chance SPOT has to become a credible rescue affiliate. If they SPOT can't do this then it's likely the device will become just a blip in the marketplace. Or worse, if someone sues then over an inability to launch a rescue in sufficient time... and wins a significant award. I can imagine a jury receptive to someone who was told that simply pressing the "911" button would save their life and no one responded. Craig Jungers Moses Lake, WA *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Aug 19 2008 - 11:25:30 PDT
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