New OSHA rule proposal would eliminate volunteer search and rescue teams in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Volunteer search and rescue groups may have to seek assistance themselves after OSHA proposed a change to emergency response standards that would expand protections for rescue workers.

Utah sheriffs, however, oppose the change, with one of them saying it would put an end to volunteer search and rescue forces in Utah.

Last month, the Utah Sheriff's Association sent a letter to OSHA outlining their concerns about the new changes, and all 29 sheriffs signed it.

Whether it's mountains, forests, water, or any other terrain imaginable, Utah's search and rescue teams go wherever they go.

And often they do it voluntarily.

“With their own time, their own schedule and, for the most part, their own equipment,” said Cache County Sheriff Chad Jensen.

But according to Jensen, Utah may soon run out of volunteer teams.

“This OSHA rule would essentially destroy volunteer fire departments and volunteer search and rescue teams,” Jensen said Monday at the Federalism Commission meeting.

The new rule would “expand the scope of OSHA standards to cover a broad range of hazards faced by emergency responders.”

Jensen said this would require Utah sheriff's offices to provide hundreds of hours of paid training for their search and rescue personnel.

“Most sheriffs in Utah would perish if they had to pay for 600 to 700 hours of training and certification,” he said.

OSHA standards do not apply to volunteer emergency responders, but all 29 Utah sheriffs say that is not the case here because the volunteers would be defined as emergency responders under the proposed rule.

“The regulation does not make it clear that volunteers are excluded from this regulation,” Jensen said.

But while Jensen believes this would be very damaging to sheriffs and volunteers, there is one group that has the most to lose.

“The citizens and the people who want to get into the backcountry and the wilderness of the state of Utah, because if there is no more search and rescue, those resources and those rescue and search operations will no longer exist,” he said.

The letter goes on to say that if the sheriff's volunteer search and rescue team is not exempted from this rule, the lives of countless people in Utah and across the West will be put at risk.

For more information about the proposed rule, visit the Federal Register website.

OSHA will hold an informal public meeting in November, where a representative of the Federalism Commission will support the Utah Sheriff's Association's opposition to the rule.

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