Andy McCord

My brother in law & his 15 year old lad went walking on some local fells on monday, for some reason his lad decides he will run up the fell leaving his father & mother behind, suddenly fog descends & he gets lost.

Eventually his dad decides enough is enough & calls the police, they call out the helicopter & mountain rescue, 2 hrs later he turns up some 6 miles away & makes the call to his dad using a phonebox.

My Question is, will he be billed for the cost of the helicopter & calling out mount rescue.

TIA
Andy

The Chief

I wouldn't have thought so!

RON

I would certainly hope not, thats why we have emergency services isn't it...???? for emergencies...!!

PG

Nah, but that shouldnt stop you from mocking up a letter from the local police station asking him for £100's

The Chief

Pure evil ha ha nice one

Tiggs

2hrs in fog? his dad was bit keen with the poice wasnt he?

IWatkins

Andy,

You wouldn't normally be billed.

But do consider that the majority of Mountain Rescue teams are funded via donations only. So might be a nice thing to do to contribute something to them, even if it is only a token payment.

I used to be in the mountain rescue in my younger years and we never minded being called out for situations like this. You never know, it could have worked out a lot worse. Hence it was never problem. However, the diesel for the landies needed topping up etc. and that all came out of the tiny budget we had.

Cheers

Ian

Tiggs

send them his muppet son to wash their cars for a month!

Andy McCord

Nice idea PG the reason i ask is in this day & age if you require an ambulance after you've been in an accident im sure ive read somewhere that they recover there cost from you so i assumed the police would try the same.

Ian, ive mentioned to him about some sort of donation.

Andy

little-ginge

Not just an ambulance.. attended A&E a few years back after a RTA, a few weeks later, a £30 bill from the hospital landed on the doormat.. I'd never heard of that one before..

Cancel Christmas, birthdays and pocket money for a year, and donate what you would have spent on him... bet that'll teach him!

davegtt

An old car of mine caught fire back in about 1999, I called the fire brigade out at about 5am who came and sorted it, everyone included my dad told me Id be charged for it but I didnt hear anything.

Andy McCord

this is exactly what my thoughts were, you can imagine what the cost of an helicopter would be

unclebuck

There be some kind of penalty IMO. It's about time people were made directly responsible for their actions.

OllyK

At £65K per month I expect you'd be looking at a couple of grand if they charged.

davegtt

But surely isnt that why we pay Taxes? So the government can look after us all in cases like these? thats how I see it anyhow.

OllyK

In theory of course, you are correct. Sadly the government's mis-management of the economy and attitude of throwing cash in an unstructured way at whoever is shouting the loudest, tends to result in deserving cases such as moutain resuce being woefully underfunded.

davegtt

Sounds about right, expect a nice big fat bill then

Chrisgr31

There is an argument that call-outs that are cuased by sheer stupidity should be charged for. There is equally a theory the lad should suffer some penalty for charging off, although getting lost might be sufficient!

Not sure why RTA health costs are recoverable because in that case surely if you hurt yourself cycling, fell walking, wind surfing etc you should be charged health costs. Presumably though the difference is that there is insurance in most RTAs?

OllyK

FWIW, my guess would be that in an RTA you are (or should be) insured and so they expect you to pass the bill on as an uninsured loss.

little-ginge

oh wise one..

OllyK

Ok so I got bored and fell asleep before the last sentence of Chrisgr31's post

Sbradley

As an ex SAR pilot I can confirm that we only ever billed one person for a callout. Even though 90% were down to stupidity, sometimes bordering on criminal negligence.

The one we billed was to make a point - no expectation of it being paid. The bloke billed us for not recovering the airbed that his daughter was on when we hauled her out of the water about 8 miles () offshore... I forget exactly how long we were looking for, bt I do know that one more search pattern was it before we had to recover. And the next land she'd have hit was the Azores...

He didn't even thank us for bringing a cold, frightened but alive eight year old back. Just hand-wrote a bill for £4.99 for the airbed. So the liaison officer at the hospital wrote him a bill for, if I remember rightly, about £7000. Plus VAT.

Made me feel a bit better, anyway...

SB

ricardo_wrx

I bet the kid ran off just to get a ride in the chopper?

I hope a donation was made, I saw on TV that coastguard programme and this guy gave the lifeguards a big crate of beer as a thank you.

With mountain resuce they might like a donation of hot cocoa and some thinsulate gloves.

SiPie

Classic ......

I would of offered to take the father on a flight to find the airbed. Then chucked the w@nker out at least 8 miles offshore straight into the sea

unclebuck

Incredible story. Must make you wonder why you bother.

The Rani

The costs are normally recovered from the insurance companies in these circumstances.

The fire brigade charge if you call them out for a non-emergency (like you've locked yourself out or your cat's stuck up a tree), but they never normally charge anything if a young child is involved or it is a potentially life-threatening situation.

ricardo_wrx

What about when the fire brigade turned up at one of my neighbours house. Just to fit a smoke alarm and deliver some leaflets..... who picks up that bill?
Also I know the local fire station to me used training time to fix our office roof. One of the girls i worked with knew one of the fire crew. The following day the police came to repair a window! lol

astraboy

I remember once getting stuck in a lift (bit pissed and started bouncing up and down in it, all of a sudden *clunk* it grinds to a halt ) When the firebrigade came along and hauled me out I made it my business to take them down the pub and buy them a drink each. Under normal circumstances, they had to refuse, but they were 20 minutes away from knocking off for the evening so the radios came out and "Uh, yeah, 20 minute delay guv"
It weren't much but it made me feel better.
astraboy.

Stainy

You had better hope they DONT charge, it runs at £1200 an hour

PG

Not necessarily true. We will do so if it is someone being ****ty or for persistent fire alarm activation.
Normally if it is a lock out there will be no charge if the home owner were to be worried about the risk of fire ie. Left the iron/oven on . Down to the gaffer at the time or indeed if they are being continually turned out to such calls.

As for the smoke alarms ect. Haven’t you heard ? Education is the future !! We are now primarily educators of community fire safety and now the management see putting out fires as an inconvenience !!

The roof ????????
Perhaps under the remit of “rendering humanitarian services” ??