Three deaths and one possible idiot, the PLB debate in North America
Due to the recent deaths on Mount Hood (USA) of three friends out climbing, there has been a sensible local call for the mandatory carriage of PLBs by individuals climbing Mount Hood. This in turn has triggered a heated debate headed by local SAR teams suggesting that the carriage of PLBs will encourage people to become over confident and less aware of the dangers involved in the sport or activity of climbing.
As a demonstration of how unreliable the PLB is there have been published reports of an ACR PLB 300 Micro Fix being falsely activated on no less than four occasions. This has apparently triggered responses from the local SAR agencies, wasting both time and money.
With now nearly 1 million 406MHz beacons owned on a global basis, there are always likely to be false activations, either through accidental events, faulty product or by the ignorance of the user. The question is what is an acceptable level of false alerting and to that matter what is an acceptable number of deaths? 406MHz PLBs save lives, of that there is no question. They operate in places that no other forms of communication, emergency or otherwise, can technically hope to transmit. They are directly linked into the global SAR network, ensuring the most efficient connection to national and international SAR response units. The most modern PLB units are, within minutes of activation, transmitting a unique digital number, which through national registration, should instantly lead the authorities to the owner of the beacon and all of their contact details. This in turn enables them to verify the legitimacy of the alert and confirmation of the likely location. Which, by the way, will be supported by highly accurate GPS latitude and longitude coordinations also transmitted from the PLB. Under normal circumstances this information will lead the SAR teams to within +/- 62m of the PLB transmission, which should enable them to enact a rescue in a much more timely and efficient manner, giving the team a much higher chance of pulling out any casualties alive.
Okay, so you have one possible idiot falsely activating his or her PLB. Should this really be heralded as the reason why future climbers should not be encouraged to carry life saving PLBs which have a proven global track record of saving lives on land or at sea? Should the authorities not consider that saving lives through the carriage of PLBs is far more important than one incident of either a misinformed individual, a faulty unit or series of mistakes. The debate continues.
