One of the biggest problems I have with search and rescue--and maybe somebody can respond to this--is with the 30 minutes. When the people are there on site, it takes 30 minutes to get off the ground or you have a 30-minute limit.
I was talking to an ambulance driver out our way the other day, and if they go out in the night and make a call and they get home at 3 o'clock in the morning, they have to get somebody out of bed to put fuel in that ambulance before it's put back in the garage. So when the next call comes, it only takes five minutes and they're aboard the machine and they're gone. Now these are not people who are living at the garage. They're just volunteers like the ones you see around most communities. It's one of the things people are really questioning.
The other thing is, what is the price of a life? I went to Larry Parsons' funeral. I had to go and talk to his wife. Her husband died because it took that chopper 50 minutes to get off the ground. When the chopper got there--and it's in this report here, and don't ask me where I got it, by the way--they were responsive when the helicopter came on site. So you can imagine if it had gotten off the ground in 20 minutes--that was half an hour earlier--they'd be home now with their families today. This is the big issue I have.
When it comes to money to put it there 24/7, I think it is darn well worth it. If my taxes have to go up a little bit, I've no problem with that. I spent part of my life on the water. I know how dangerous it is out there. It's not like if you're driving your car and you run off the road, and by and by you get up on the road and hitchhike. Out there, it's a different thing altogether. A vessel can go down in minutes, as has been proven over the years. I could name some that people never had a chance to get a lifeboat off of. Some of them never even got their life jackets on. That's how fast the boat can go down.
In a vessel you have all kinds of water intakes coming into it, and it only takes one of them to break down in the engine room and all of a sudden that boat is half full of water before anybody knows about it. When you get so much water, it'll automatically sink or tip over, whatever the case may be.
So the response time to me is the most important thing, and it has to be 24/7. Find the money. Cut back on some other wasteful programs. I could name a few, but I won't here today. Find the money.