Minneapolis urban explorers may have to foot their own rescue bills

People who get into trouble while crawling around abandoned buildings in Minneapolis could soon have to foot the bill for their rescue.

Council President Barb Johnson plans to introduce a proposal that would impose a fee for some technical rescues. It would be targeted only at efforts required as a result of someone breaking the law, such as a fall after trespassing in an old building.

Johnson said the plan was inspired in part by two recent incidents in which one person died and another was injured while exploring two abandoned grain elevators in the city. Both falls required complicated rescue efforts by the Minneapolis Fire Department and other metro agencies.

"This is a really dangerous area of response," she said. "It's labor intensive and equipment intensive, training intensive, and I really want to discourage this kind of activity."

Johnson said she's looking to deter the practice of urban exploring, because she fears more falls could put rescuers at risk and add a significant expense for the city. She said such rescues require a large number of people; the effort to retrieve a University of Minnesota student who fell in the Bunge Tower grain elevator in June required the services of Minnesota Task Force 1, a statewide technical rescue team. An emergency room doctor had to be lowered into the building.

"What does that cost?" Johnson said of the rescue. "We're looking at quantifying our costs involved in the rescues and making suggestions for hourly rates."

Emily Roland, the young woman involved in the Bunge rescue, died from injuries suffered in the three-story fall.

City Attorney Susan Segal said state law allows cities to impose fees, provided that they approve an ordinance that lays out exactly how the fees will be charged and collected. Minneapolis already has a fee for cleanup of hazardous materials, though Segal said she's not sure how often it is enforced.

Smaller communities around the state have already implemented fees for more basic emergency calls. Among them: the city of Minnetrista, which in 2013 approved a $500 fee for fire responses.

But proposals have been met with criticism. In 2011, officials in South St. Paul and West St. Paul pitched a plan to charge out-of-towners involved in car crashes handled by the South Metro Fire Department. They estimated that they'd bring in about $30,000 per year, but the plan was abandoned after the cities received negative feedback from residents.