For most of us who live in a city, emergency assistance is only minutes away by simply dialing 911 on our telephone. However, when enjoying the great outdoors emergency assistance can be difficult to reach and it is often several hours away. Many people die each year in rural accidents simply because they were to far away from timely emergency assistance. Response-time to an emergency is often the primary factor affecting the survivability of an accident victim. Many factors affect response time; beginning with how quickly first aid is brought to the victim and then with how soon emergency transport is called so that they can respond. Then Emergency Responders arrival to a remote accident scene can take an hour or more - even with a helicopter. Finally, it takes even more time for the patient to be transported back to the trauma center. And during each passing moment, your patient chances of survival get smaller.

While it is impractical ... even impossible, to prepare for every emergency - it is possible to give some forethought about the method your group might use for contacting emergency assistance while visiting remote outdoor regions. An Emergency Assistance Plan is nothing more than a single-sided piece of paper that explains how you contact the Emergency Responders for the area that you are visiting.

The plan contains information about where the nearest telephone is located, or the location of where cell phones work. It contains information about where you are so that the person who summons emergency assistance knows what to say. The plan might contain information about drive time to the nearest hospital. Plans that are more elaborate might even contain important medical information about some of your group members, such as "Jane is diabetic" or "Simon has a heart condition."

For group activities, we suggest that your group create and adopt an Emergency Assistance Plan and share it with everyone in your group. Emergency Assistance Plans are intend only as guides to help members of your group know how to respond in certain kinds of emergencies so that proper assistance is provided as soon as possible. A good plan will tell others in your group who is trained or qualified to assist with emergencies. The plan also advises member how to best contact emergency assistance for things like medical or fire emergencies.

Click here to obtain a sample copy of an Emergency Assistance Plan.
Click here to obtain a copy of an Establishing a Helicopter Landing Zone.

Note that these plans are for example purposes only and may contain critical errors. It is very important that you draft you own plan and verify the information contained in your plan.