New Zealand has one of the largest search and rescue regions in the world, and when not everyone registers their beacon it wastes time and potentially costs lives.
One of the small electronic devices saved the life of an avalanche survivor.
“You’re in sort of a bit of a washing machine and I was trying to clear my mouth of snow and we would’ve come down about 200 or 300 metres,” she says.
“I was totally buried with just my face out and I called out to the others, and [got] no reply.”
Her two guides died, but the woman survived by digging her way out and setting off her emergency locator beacon.
Without it, she would also have died.
In 2019 there were 276 beacon alerts.
Of these, 87 were real distress situations from registered beacons and 12 were from non-registered beacons.
But there were 177 falsely-activated beacon alerts – 43 from non-registered beacons.
“If the beacon’s unregistered we have no one to get in touch with to understand or start to triage the situation.”
Read more here:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/02/survivor-s-plea-register-your-emergency-beacons.html