In the Robb Report article ‘Happy, Healthy Trails’ Sheila Gibson Stoodley recounts the story of Ted Panhuis, a motorcyclist who had to be evacuated from the Yukon after a crash in 2008. While comparing a number of evacuation providers, Global Rescue’s ability to perform a remote Field Rescue is highlighted.

Global Rescue understands that in a serious emergency, getting yourself to the nearest hospital or landing strip might not be possible. For this reason, our commitment to our members is from the point of illness or injury. Whether by helicopter, road or yak, our rescue teams have helped members in the most remote corners of the world.

Ms. Gibson Stoodley writes:

“Ted Panhuis’s month long motorcycle journey through Yukon, Canada, last summer ended earlier than planned when his 2008 BMW R1200 GS Adventure hit a patch of deep gravel. “I tried to straighten the back wheel, but to no avail,” says Panhuis, a retired veterinarian from Ohio who has been riding motorcycles since the 1960s. “According to my friends, I was unconscious for four to five minutes after hitting the dirt.”

She continues:

“For his initial transportation to a hospital, Panhuis had to rely on the kindness of an Australian tourist—or he could have waited for an ambulance to arrive from Whitehorse. What are known as field rescues are beyond the scope of MedjetAssist [the outfit that ultimately evacuated Mr. Panhuis]. The Boston-based firm Global Rescue is among the companies that fill this gap. It offers medical-evacuation memberships with security-evacuation upgrades; it has come to the aid of members stuck in perilous situations ranging from the Haitian earthquake in 2010 to the Arab Spring uprisings to the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. The price for a yearlong individual medical membership is $329 ($655 with the security option); a yearlong family membership costs $579 ($1,155 with the security coverage).

Two years ago, the company rescued an elite mountain climber who was stuck on Kanchenjunga, a Him­alayan peak near the India–Nepal border that is the world’s third tallest. The climber could not descend any farther because she had hurt her knee in a fall, and she was experiencing snow blindness. Before the call for help, she had made it to Camp 4, which is about 24,000 feet above sea level. “I don’t know what the highest helicopter evacuation was at the time,” says Global Rescue CEO and founder Dan Richards. “I suspect that if it didn’t set the record, it was close to it, right up near the threshold of operation [for a helicopter].”

Unlike MedjetAssist’s Gobbels, who has worked as a flight nurse and paramedic, Richards does not have hands-on rescue experience; he has a finance background. From 2003 through 2004, he searched the market for a company like Global Rescue so he could invest in it. Finding no business that fit the bill, he started his own. “I discovered that the assistance companies were very good at finding lost luggage, but when the situation is more extreme—if you wanted to have the cavalry come—that was not what they did,” he says. “I’m not smart enough to answer the question of why [companies such as Global Rescue] didn’t exist. I just know that they didn’t.”

 

Read the full article here: Health: Happy, Healthy Trails | Robb Report | The Luxury Resource