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msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] What Rick Maxon wants to learn

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Subject: Mounted search and rescue

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  • From: "IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN" <ilichten1@verizon.net>
  • To: "'Mounted search and rescue'" <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] What Rick Maxon wants to learn
  • Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:36:14 -0500

The problem with spontaneous volunteers in Pennsylvania is a legal one, not
a skill level. A competent search manager can work with his planning and
logistics slots to figure out what to do with unskilled labor. After all,
who teaches volunteer firefighters to do wilderness search (and often in
turn out gear for insurance purposes)?

Pennsylvania does not have sovereign immunity and does have a very strict
workman's comp law. The first means that anyone can sue a government agency
or official for their actions as a government official. Any person accepted
as a spontaneous volunteer becomes a government employee, in essence a
government official and the supervisor is responsible for his actions and
safety. The second means that the municipality where the emergency is or
the municipality where the primary response agency is resident provides
workman's comp, whether they have insurance or not. Under the new in-state
mutual aid act the requesting agency accepts liability and the responding
agency accepts primary responsibility for comp and individual liability.
The new law also requires the responding agency to retain actual operation
of vehicles they own and therefore insure under the no-fault system.

Given these legalities no OIC or municipal EM will ever accept spontaneous
volunteers. Even fire chiefs, who under the Fire and Panic Act can
commandeer anything and anyone, will do so. Irv just spent all day at the
fire academy with emergency managers who cited this problem as the reason
there is no CERT program in their township-- no dispatch means total
liability with no insurance coverage of any kind.

The other reality is that resources are dispatched to a scene under NIMS
through the EOC or field command unit. What a unit sends and how good it is
determines if they get called out again. If you are not dispatched, stay
home.
-----Original Message-----
From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Una Smith
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 3:55 PM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] What Rick Maxon wants to learn





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