Mounted search and rescue

["Irvin Lichtenstein " <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

The medical insurance or comp is always expensive.  The self insurance trust in this area (7 townships) starts at $5000 per year per fire company for comp, and they don’t pay claims.  The minimum on duty Accidental Death and Disability from VFIS is also around $5000 per year, assuming you sign for 3 years.  If SAR really transitions to the Health Department we will lose our statutory coverage.  Another question which has come up is even though we are emergency responders we do not do fire suppression and the feds are questioning PSODB for non-fire suppression incidents or personnel.  They are not paying for juniors or apprentices because they are not allowed into burning buildings and are trying to duck claims for special fire police hit by cars at fire scenes. 

 

It depends on whether your members have other medical insurance coverage.  Also, are you an employee of the agency that requests you? If so you are automatically covered under their comp because subcontractors have to be in most states.  EMAC creates a problem however. In PA the in-state EMAC statute requires the requesting agency to provide liability and the responding agency to provide comp. This is further complicated because the comp law allows the carrier to subrogate the claim to the requesting government. In PA volunteers are employees of the township where the incident is or the organization is resident and we use that clause to claim coverage.

 

Everybody is always in a fund raising mode, even the fire company I belong to which receives a dedicated real estate tax fund is always raising funds.

 

Irv Lichtenstein

SE PA SAR  

 

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From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of boddyrs@comcast.net
Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 8:34 AM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] Insurance

ers