Originally Posted by
John R
Should emergency response be based on the bad judgement of the victim? I don't think so. I've ridden Main divide many times in the rain and in the dark. How hard would it of been to cover his route on a motorcycle? I know the Sheriffs dept. has them. They use them to catch illegal offroaders.
Every single person on here and STR that questioned the Sheriff's decision launch a night search has failed to address a significant issue: Assuming SAR could have found Mr. Marin alive, in the middle of the night, could they have saved him?
The poor man was confused, slurred his speech and had to be asked questions multiple times
at 5:30pm when he spoke to his wife. He was already suffering from hypothermia at that point and his condition would have been much worse several hours later. Assuming SAR could have located Mr. Marin in the dark (a HUGE assumption), what then? There was no way to evac him. The man needed to be in an ER at 5:30pm, not treated in the back country in a rain storm six hours later.
The odds that SAR 1) could have found him in the dark, 2) before he died, and 3) kept him alive until a chopper could get him out on Sunday morning seem very very long to me. I'm guessing the Sheriff was balancing those odds against the safety of his people when he made his decision.