Oregon Public Broadcasting

Search-and-rescue clubs around the Northwest are providing a vital taxi service where regular cars can’t get through. 

The four-wheel drive owners are ferrying dialysis patients to appointments and giving rides to essential hospital workers.  Correspondent Tom Banse reports.

Lately, you’ve probably heard us more than once say, ‘If you don’t have to be out on the roads, don’t be.’ 

Those words are a call to action for Olympia retiree Chuck Hornbuckle.  He and a cadre of other four-wheel drive truck owners have been averaging about a hundred miles a day in the snow.

Chuck Hornbuckle: “Critical people at the local medical facilities were not comfortable driving under adverse condition.  So we stepped up and said we would provide free transportation for them.”

Hornbuckle volunteers with the Thurston County Sheriff’s jeep patrol.  It’s one of a bunch of search and rescue 4-by-4 units enlisted to transport the snowbound, in large measure dialysis patients.

Riders also include nurses, surgical aides, and other hospital workers.

Chuck Hornbuckle: “(Such as) people who do the clean up.  They’re important too.”