As a hiking craze continues to boom in Taiwan, the strain it is putting on the nation’s emergency rescue services has become a serious issue.
People being more active and eager to explore Taiwan’s stunning wilderness is a positive development — that is what the government hoped for when it opened up the nation’s mountains and forests to the public in October 2019.
There are also bound to be growing pains as people learn new outdoor skills and realize that scaling a peak is not as easy as it looks on Instagram.
Some incidents have been serious, and the government and hiking experts have urged people to research, prepare and train before heading into the mountains. Awareness will take time, but it is hopefully spreading.
The concern is when people act irresponsibly and head into the wild with little preparation, expecting rescue teams to bail them out.
Even worse is when they call to be rescued for a minor incident. The headline of an article in the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in August last year read: “Treating helicopters as taxis,” showing how bad the problem has gotten.
Many of the incidents that the article describes could have been avoided with careful planning and adequate equipment. In some of the more egregious cases, people called for help simply because they ran out of water, or overestimated their stamina and could not finish their trek.
Last week, after lawmakers revealed that the National Airborne Service Corps conducted 39.7 percent more emergency evacuations last year than in 2019, Minister of the Interior Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said that the ministry is in favor of charging people for air rescues if the incident was minor or preventable, as rescuing a person by helicopter costs about NT$200,000.
This proposal makes sense, and such a measure would push people to do their research and exercise more caution before tackling a mountain.
While some incidents are clearly due to a lack of preparation, other cases are harder to judge. Clear guidelines are needed regarding the types of rescue that people need to pay for.
The government should perhaps charge for all search-and-rescue missions — not just helicopter rescues — that are clearly due to neglect.
For example, the New Taipei City Fire Department has complained about the surging number of mountain rescues it has had to conduct since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is the firefighters’ duty — although some missions involve volunteers — they are frustrated that people end up needing their services because of a lack of preparation.
The most common reasons include getting lost, becoming separated from a group and misjudging the time required to finish a hike before it gets dark.
However, they have also needed to rescue people who have taken children to unsuitable areas or people dressed inappropriately, such as those hiking in sandals and tank tops, while others only had minor scrapes.
Missions typically involve more than 20 personnel, but while no law prevents hikers from calling for help, neither does a law allow departments to charge for rescues.
This, too, must change, but coupled with education and hiking awareness, the situation will only improve.
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