Safety in the outdoors...

We first met Wayne through NZ tramping news which is a closed group on Facebook. We offered him the option to stand on our media soap box and have his say - this is what he had to say...

Some of you may already have decided after reading the heading, you don‘t need to know any more about safety. You’ve been there done that, got the T-shirt and know all about staying safe in the NZ outdoors. You may think you are safe for completely different reasons… You may have a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) or maritime EPIRB equivalent for instance. Various rescue organisations tell people they should take a beacon with them when they head out into the wilderness… Incidents of people requiring rescue in NZ are increasing greatly in recent years. A lot of rescuees don’t have a beacon with them which can draw out a search and may make the difference between life and death. But it may not always be a lifesaver. For those who have beacons, do you know how to use it properly? A recent incident on the Routeburn where foreign tourists were caught out, rescue authorities stated they should have taken a beacon. This meant they would have had to rent one but their grasp of English wasn’t good at all. Would they have had packed the beacon in an accessible place to access it, despite being severely injured and immobile? Would they have stored it loosely on their pack and had it ripped off in an accident and lost it? Could they have read the English instructions on the beacon to understand how to use it? In other scenarios, people are activating beacons as they know a search will be launched to find them because they are running late. But what trip intention information if any, have these parties left with outside contacts? Have they only given the date that they are due out and left the rest up to interpretation for their contacts? i.e. What should the contact do if you are a day or two late? If you have a beacon, do you understand the various scenarios when you should and shouldn’t use it? Should you use the beacon just because you are running late and your situation isn’t life threatening? If you are sitting in a DOC hut, did you know one of the first things DOC will often do if you are notified as overdue, is to send a helicopter along your intended trip route and visit any huts along the way? When you activate the beacon, SAR will treat it as a possible life and death scenario and do their utmost to locate you as fast as possible and if necessary, extract you from your location. You may have a comms device that can send messages or have two-way communication, but they still don’t always have 100% connection reliability. So generic advice about taking a beacon with you is only part of the message that needs to get out. Leaving detailed trip intentions is still as relevant as ever, even with the new locator beacon technology. A few words on cell phones in the wilderness: Reception is often non-existent, and batteries don’t last. Don’t rely on them for rescue or communication. There have been a lot of extremely lucky people recently who have just had enough reception to get hold of police when they were in potentially life-threatening situations.

A few words on who should pay for rescues: Charging for rescues can lead to a greater reluctance to ask for rescue when one is needed. This can make search and rescue harder and more dangerous for rescue services. Of course you don’t want to encourage reckless use of the system either. If people are going to be charged then it should be in clear cut cases of needlessly wasting rescue resources.

700,000 Over people who hike in New Zealand each 338 year, people have to be 6 rescued on average don’t come home.