That will make the Mat-Su one of very few entities in Southcentral to engage in the disputed practice. Most agencies rescue people for free. Only the Anchorage Fire Department charges a fee, and then only when responders leave the department's service area.
Nationally and in Alaska, many search-and-rescue groups oppose billing for backcountry saves. They say the prospect of a fee can make people wary of calling for help, or trigger delays that complicate rescues, especially in the mountains.
But the Mat-Su -- which charges for ambulance transports and responses to motor-vehicle accidents -- decided last summer it wasn't fair to charge all taxpayers for far-flung rescues when just a few people need the service.
Officials with the borough's emergency services department are working on the policy now and expect to start billing for off-road rescues by spring.
Proposed fees span various categories of rescue, including charging for the use of ATVs, airboats or snowmachines if responders go off-road -- $300 for the first hour, $150 for each additional half hour, plus $200 for trailer -- or a $150 flat rate for search and rescues of lost people.
Everyone who gets an off-road rescue will get a bill, said Clint Vardeman, the borough's deputy director of emergency services. But bill collectors will try to go easy on people who happened into trouble instead of going looking for it.
"If somebody tries to drive across the Matanuska River and they get stuck out there and they're standing on the hood of their car with water coming up, that is certainly going to be a billable event," Vardeman said. "Somebody that makes a boneheaded move, we'll probably be more aggressive at trying to collect than someone that's an innocent bystander, so to speak."
The fee scale for rescues also includes a provision to waive fees in some cases, such as when a search involves lost children.
Still, it's hard to say just how the borough will define a victim's level of blame as officials hammer out the new policy about which situations deserve more leniency than others.
"It's not going to be easy," he said. "If somebody gets into a situation that is not of their making and they literally don't have the money, it's not our method to try and take food out of people's mouths or shoes off people's feet."
ONE DIFFICULT RESCUE
Plenty of people encounter risky situations just living life in the Valley. Big as West Virginia, the Mat-Su boasts three mountain ranges, three major river systems and sprawling stretches of tundra and forest to get lost in.
Moose hunters get separated from their buddies out Petersville Road way and spend a cold night out, unprepared. Four-wheelers break down at the Knik Glacier, miles from help or extra supplies. Pickups punch through weak ice on channels near Big Lake.
At least one recent rescue would have fallen under the borough's developing policy.
Judith Willems, a 55-year-old Talkeetna woman, expects to lose three fingers on her left hand, frostbitten on an ill-fated trip into her family's remote homestead in mid-November.
Willems, her husband and 16-year-old son were en route to the homestead near the North Fork of Montana Creek The family decided to head for the homestead after they were evicted from a local campground where they lived in a trailer, Willems said recently.
Then everything went sideways, Willems said. Their snowmachines wouldn't start. A broken thermometer led her to believe it was warmer than it was. Going in, she fell on the icy trail, then exposed her left hand to the cold while gripping the line of a pregnant dog.
The trip took five hours longer than expected. By dark, the family couldn't find a wall tent at the homestead and ended up camped outside. The mercury had probably dropped to about 20 below.
The group called friends in town for help, rescuers said. After a local musher crashed his sled and injured his leg trying to bring out Willems, borough rescuers arrived the next night. Another team came out a few days later and rescued the family's dogs -- including five puppies born at the camp.
The trail was pretty awful, with slick overflow in places and just enough snow to need snowmachines but not enough to cover logs and other obstacles, said Tim Morgan, a borough rescue captain in Talkeetna. On the way out, rescuers encountered one hill so steep they had to load Willems off a patient sled, walk her up the slope, and pull the machine over it with ropes.
Willems received a $900 ambulance bill, she said.
She's recovering in an assisted-living home in Anchorage.
"Don't make the same mistake I made -- always be prepared," Willems said. "Also, thanks to the fire department, EMTs, dog rescue people, nurses, doctors, the people that helped us. God bless you and thank you."
RESCUE FEES RARE
Nationally, only eight states charge for searches and rescues, according to an article in Outside Magazine in November about a New Hampshire Eagle Scout billed $25,000 for a rescue on Mount Washington.
The national Mountain Rescue Association and National Association for Search and Rescue both oppose charging subjects for search and rescue. A Colorado SAR group illustrates the problem with examples of people who refused help because of fears over a bill: A climber stuck on a 14,000-foot Colorado peak asked to be talked down because she couldn't afford help; a stranded Idaho snowmobiler told his wife to hang up on an SAR team because he'd read media coverage of rescue charges; a lost runner in Arizona heard searchers in the night but deliberately avoided them because he was afraid he'd be billed.
The Alaska Mountain Rescue Group "does not advocate charging for search and rescue services because it can cause persons needing help to delay requesting help, often making the situation more risky for rescuers," chairman Bill Romberg said.
In Alaska, few agencies charge for backcountry rescues.
The state's lead search-and-rescue agency -- the troopers -- does not charge because troopers are mandated by law to conduct SARs, spokeswoman Megan Peters said.
The Alaska National Guard doesn't charge, and neither does the U.S. Coast Guard. The Anchorage Fire Department does, but only when the calls come from outside the AFD service area, spokeswoman Bridget Bushue said. Then again, that includes high-volume rescue spots like Flattop Mountain and the Cook Inlet mud flats.
Even climbers on North America's highest peak don't get charged extra when the government's high-altitude helicopter plucks them from the windswept reaches of Denali. Instead, the National Park Service charges all climbers a $200 "use fee" before they take on the mountain, said John Quinley, a park service spokesman in Anchorage. The park also tries to reduce the number of mountain rescues with climbing brochures in many different languages and a requisite, 60-day registration period during which climbers get advice on safety and self-sufficiency from rangers.
After 13 people died in the Alaska Range in 1992, the park service evaluated charging for rescues or requiring every climber to get insurance that would pay for rescues, Quinley said. The agency rejected both ideas. Why? No other parks charged such a fee, and in terms of insurance, some studying the idea worried climbers would see the relatively small premium as a "pre-paid rescue ... a ticket down the mountain," he said.
More broadly, Quinley said, the park service didn't want climbers worried about a bill to delay rescues until the unpredictable weather at an 18,000-foot base camp deteriorates into a maelstrom of wind and snow that make rescue even riskier. "If they think they're going to have to write a $9,000 check, they may wait until it becomes some horrific life-endangering operation," Quinley said. "They're already in trouble. We don't want to put more people in trouble."
SMALL FEES EXPECTED
Mat-Su officials say their pending policy won't discourage people from calling for help because the borough rarely gets involved in searches. That job generally falls to the troopers. Many local volunteers and nonprofit groups such as MATSAR also participate.
Instead, borough officials say, their evolving policy would come into play after searchers locate someone close enough to a road that emergency crews can get to them via four-wheelers or snowmachines or Argos.
"Our piece of it comes in once they've found them. You're going to go in six miles and pick them up and bring them back," Vardeman said. "The chance of us having a huge bill is nonexistent."
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