By Jeffrey Weiss
Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2006 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
The three climbers lost on Mount Hood chose to put themselves at risk for their own satisfaction. But whether their trip was well planned or foolhardy had no effect on the exhaustive labors to save the men.
Scores of volunteers and professionals risked their lives, and tens of thousands of dollars were spent to try to rescue the lost. For 11 harrowing days, the search continued with no consideration of whether the effort was “worth it.”
Why? From a strictly utilitarian perspective, risking many to save a few seems to make no sense. If an ant falls down a crevice, the rest of the colony sends out no search parties.
But the default option for American culture is generally the same as was seen on Mount Hood: Rescue first, analyze later.
The motivation may be religious; God says to do it. It may be more selfish; if I try to rescue you, maybe one day you’ll try to rescue me. Or it may be something harder to pin down; scientists struggle to explain altruism.
For climbers, there’s a powerful “brotherhood of the rope” that partly explains the response on Mount Hood, said Dr. David Shilm, a travel medicine specialist who spent five years running a clinic in the Himalayas.
But firefighters plunge into burning homes, never wondering if a careless smoker ignited the fire. Police officers fling themselves into rushing floods to save people who drove into the water, never asking why the driver didn’t stop. The Coast Guard helps drunken boaters, no matter how besotted. Marines famously leave no fellow Marine behind, no matter how the injured soldier got wounded.
And regular folks suddenly confronted with critical needs often jump to help, heedless of the potential personal cost.
All victims are not equal, of course. Stories with a dramatic twist and visuals that lend themselves to live TV grab more media attention these days and, inevitably, more resources. And people who can afford to pay for help - like the relatives of the Kim family who were lost in an Oregon snowstorm earlier this month - can gain additional searchers.
But high profile rescues, such as Jessica McClure in a Texas well or miners trapped in the bowels of a West Virginia coal mine, are only the most famous of many lesser-known efforts.
Reason doesn’t matter
Rescuers tend not to do a cost-benefit projection while they’re rescuing, experts say. And many people for whom rescue is a part of the job tend not to talk about it much, even after the fact.
“There’s a lot of aspects of police work you just don’t discuss,” said Dallas police Officer Jeffrey Ell.
Officer Ell, a 20-year veteran with the department, recently pulled a woman from her burning apartment. He and his rookie partner had to go in and out of smoke-filled rooms three times before they found her and pulled her to safety.
Officer Ell still doesn’t know how the fire started - and doesn’t much care. Saving people who may have put themselves in a tough spot is just part of the job, he said.
“We deal with people who have poor social skills or for whatever reason don’t recognize the obvious signs of danger around them,” he said. “That’s about 85 or 90 percent of our job.”
In adventure rescues, on the other hand, the people in trouble knew they were doing something dangerous. But outsiders may not know how well they’d planned to avoid problems. Because the three climbers died on Mount Hood, we’ll never know if they got caught by something unforeseeable.
“Bad things can happen in the mountains, even if you think you’re prepared,” Dr. Shlim said.
The massive response on Mount Hood, and other large-scale searches, are evidence of American affluence as much as altruism, he said. As a society, we can afford it.
By contrast, in the cash-strapped Himalayas, lost tourists could routinely expect a helicopter search while native Nepalese could not, he said. The difference was a matter of scarce resources -not many helicopters available - and money. Tourists were much more likely to have the $1,500 to $2,000 a helicopter rescue would cost the military, Dr. Shlim said.
That doesn’t mean Nepalese are any less unselfish than Americans. Individual Nepalese, at great personal risk, carried injured climbers to safety on their backs while he was there, he said.
The Mount Hood rescue attempt that started Dec. 10 included more than 70 climbers and several military helicopters and planes and cost about $7,000 a day. The body of 48-year-old Dallas climber Kelly James was airlifted off the 11,239-foot summit of Mount Hood on Monday.
Still lost, but presumed dead, are Brian Hall, a 38-year-old former soccer pro from Dallas, and Jerry “Nikko” Cooke, a 36-year-old Wall Street lawyer.
Even though rescuers tried to limit their own risk this time - and there were no reported injuries - that’s not always possible. In May 2002, during what experts say is the safest season to climb Mount Hood, three mountaineers were killed and a rescue helicopter crashed trying to save six others.
There but for the grace
Other kinds of rescues use time and resources, even if they don’t involve much personal risk.
Texas Baptist Men is a 6,000-member volunteer force that provides disaster relief. The worst injury any of them has suffered is a broken bone or two. But they spend long days working under difficult conditions, serving meals, cutting down storm debris, offering child care, and providing other services for victims of natural disasters.
Whether any of the suffering was avoidable isn’t something they think about, said Gary Smith, the volunteer disaster relief director.
“Most of us have messed up at one time or another in our own lives,” he said.
For the Baptist Men, the inspiration is biblical.
“It says to give a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name,” Mr. Smith said.
Good Samaritan
Americans who turn to the Bible for guidance can find plenty of rescue examples: God saves the Israelites in Exodus. In 1 Samuel, David and his army hunt down a larger band of Amalekites who had kidnapped women and children.
Christians have the parable of the Good Samaritan. And for many Christians, their entire religion is based on a massive rescue: They believe that Jesus sacrificed himself to save souls from hell - souls that don’t deserve the effort.
There are also secular ethical frameworks to consider, said Dr. Rushworth Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics in Maine. His book, How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living, is used by the U.S. Coast Guard to design ethics training for officers.
“The really tough ethical questions are not right vs. wrong but right vs. right,” he said.
On Mount Hood, should society have sought to do the most good for the largest number? Or should people have followed the principle that calls for society to offer the same benefits for all who are in trouble?
“Both of those principles are highly ethical,” Dr. Kidder said.
American culture - and even American law - tends to side with trying the rescue when a life might be saved. Most states have “Good Samaritan” laws that protect would-be rescuers from legal liability. And in 1921, New York appeals court Judge Benjamin Cardozo wrote a famous opinion putting the law on the side of someone injured while trying to affect a rescue:
“Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief,” he wrote, “The law does not discriminate between the rescuer oblivious of peril and the one who counts the cost.”
But not all perils attract the spotlight. Drama clearly matters.
“There are all kinds of homeless people freezing on the streets today and we don’t put the kind of effort forward for them” that we saw on Mount Hood, Dr. Shlim said.
Is compassion enough?
That’s not to say that a rescue is always a good idea, said Dr. Shlim, who co-authored the book Medicine and Compassion with a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Buddhist tradition says that compassion alone does not offer sufficient guidance, he said.
“Compassion needs to be cultivated along with wisdom,” Dr. Shlim said, “so that your intended compassion has the intended outcome.”
Last week at Mount Hood, the rescue vs. resources question ricocheted among the assembled reporters, eventually landing at the feet of Hood River County Sheriff Joe Wampler, who directed the operation.
“I have no idea,” he said, answering the cost question. “I haven’t even thought about it. Two men are still stuck up on that mountain.”