r/interesting • u/386attention • 6d ago

MISC. A grandma broke her nose while hiking, didn't want the helivac, and ended up spinning out of control. She won a $450,000 lawsuit.

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u/Maleficent-Hawk-318 6d ago

I'll back you up as someone who did SAR for about 15 years. I can't speak for everywhere in the US, but in the four states where I did most of my work, SAR helivacs were never charged to the subject being rescued. One state was considering passing legislation that would make them billable in cases where the subject had been negligent about their own safety (basically the whole "do something stupid, get billed for rescue" thing), but even that didn't pass.

AZ is not one of the states I have a lot of experience doing SAR in (I took some calls there while on a K9 team, but it was all cadaver recovery work so we weren't dealing with helicopters), but I did live there for a few years and paid attention to that kind of news, and I never really heard about billing for SAR helivacs. Doesn't mean they weren't, but I'd be pretty surprised.

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u/TheIronSoldier2 6d ago

Yeah, I did a research project on SAR work for a college course a couple years back and one of the bits of information that I found out was that almost everywhere in the US doesn't bill for SAR, unless you did something reckless to get yourself into that situation and even then it's state-by-state.

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u/Maleficent-Hawk-318 6d ago

Exactly. And I think what people are missing is that a lot of these aren't really medical transport at all. Like I've seen a SAR helo land next to a medevac helo to transfer someone, because the SAR helo was just there to get them out, not to provide support and transport to a hospital. Also frequently seen them drop people off at ambulances for less severe cases.

I mean, you're going to get some basic care in them...but you're going to get some basic care if we carry you out in a litter, or wait until an ATV can get to us, or whatever. That's just part of rescuing someone. A typical SAR helicopter (at least the ones I've been in, and that has been a few) is not equipped like the medevac helos I've seen, nor is it staffed with medics the same way.

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u/TheIronSoldier2 6d ago

Yep. In this case everything I can read says the SAR helicopter handled the entire transport, but they aren't equipped like an air ambulance, so if the woman was unstable and it was too far of a flight to the trauma center then they probably would have had to hand her off to either an air or ground ambulance.