Mounted search and rescue

["IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN" <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

In PA you have liability insurance to pay the public when you foul up and
comp to pay your members' medical bills when they get injured on the job.
Most liability carriers cover all official activities including meetings,
drills, training, fund raisers, etc. Your organization usually has to keep a
log book of such activities. Comp depends on the carrier. Since it is
usually paid for a municipality (and often is a self insurance pool or
trust) activities covered may be severely limited. Generally comp starts on
dispatch and ends at the first non-emergency stop on the way home after. So,
if a SAR member responds from home on being paged or called, goes to the
search, and stops at the food market on the way home his coverage stops when
he parks at the market. There is no case law yet that says whether a stop to
water and feed horses being hauled home is a deal breaker.  The closest is
that units stopping for fuel or sleep on the way home have been considered
still on duty when on extended mutual aid.  The key is to keep the dispatch
center informed and keep the call running.  This has also applied to driving
in new apparatus from the pick up point or delivering sold apparatus to a
new owner by volunteer fire companies. (My VFC sold an aerial and drove it
to Atlanta, GA with the crew being covered by the town's comp policy). If
the town writes the policy you may need an ordinance that sanctions your
non-emergency activities as "official" to be covered by comp even at
official activities that the town considers non-emergency (like training or
prevention training). 

You must read the policy and see what you are paying for. Most emergency
service carriers cover general liability, secondary coverage for personal
vehicle liability, host liability at fund raisers, errors and omissions by
personnel on duty, fiduciary responsibility or treasury bonds
(embezzlement), and anything else you can think of, except dog bites. 

Irv Lichtenstein ilichten1@verizon.net