Was she an expert hiker? If so, it was a true accident and that's what rescue crews so. However, if she was not.....I believe she should pay for the rescue.
This reminds me of a situation that happened....20 plus years ago:
A neighbor was pregnant. A HUGE snow storm was slated to hit our area. She was overdue by a week and by the time the storm hit, she was in to her second week of being over due. I knew this because I saw her outside and asked when she was due and the info came out. She then went on to say her doctors told her to go the hospital AHEAD of the storm just in case she went into labor (which is very common during snow storms). She said no way was she doing that because she would have sit around in the waiting room and she didn't find that comfortable.
Storm hits and it's a bad one; snow fall was in the feet. It was 24 hours after the snow started falling, in the dark, when we heard a rumble. I mean a rumble that made our townhouse shake. We lived at the bottom of a cul-de-sac that was full of cars around the circle. Here comes a TANK down the hill (our street), shoving cars to ths side and we watched as they went to our NEIGHBORS house and helped her into the tank. Yep, she had gone into labor and needed to be rescued and brought to the hospital.
They moved shortly after the birth of the baby (never found out if it was a girl or boy).
Months later, we were discussing rescue's with a friends who worked for FEMA as well as the First Response team in DC; he helped to make the call as to when to send out troops during a State of Emergency. Our snow storm came up. He told us how **ssed-off he and others were that they had to send a tank to rescue a pregnant woman who went against medical advice to go to the hospital as she was past due just in case she went into labor. That tank took away from rescuing people who had trees fall on their houses, getting emergency personnel to hospitals, etc. My husband and I looked at each other and asked him did they bill her for the rescue.
"HELL YEAH" he replied. They always do when it's a KNOWN situation and the person ignores sound advice. We asked how much it was and he said around $25,000. Did she pay? Nope, they skipped out of town and left their landlord on the hook for their rent... he was going to sue them for the money. Would the state go after them? Probably not, he said. It costs too much when lawyers get involved.
To this day we don't know if it was our neighbor he was talking about. Quite a few women went into labor that night and had babies (made the news, lol). Do I agree that she should have had to pay? Absolutely.
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