Hmm,
I will contribute to this thread under the assumption that all involved play nice, me included.
In my personal SAR history there have been a mixed bag of stuff, I also do rescue work professionally for various industries. The difference between hobby SAR and pro rescue work is there are consequences to peoples actions who get themselves into trouble on the job. Workers are held accountable for not following safe procedures. Maybe this is why I get frustrated with the public on volunteer searches as there is no accountability other than whatever punishment they have dealt themselves.
I am not going to go into all the cases I have been apart of, maybe a book is in order down the road. I will share some situations however.
Typical operation;
2 young mountain bikers in mid fall set out for a nice ride. They get turned around on a trail system and are lost. Night falls, sub freezing temps set in and they are caught with spandex, one lighter and a cell phone. We get the call at 11pm. We show up at 11:30 I get assigned a team and after checking their gear and briefing them we are off (midnight).
This search was interesting as the area we were in was recently torn to pieces from a CATII hurricane and most of the trails were fully blown in with fallen timber. Nearly impassable. We proceed on our tasking down one of these trails. After 3 hrs of crawling up, over around and under the blow down we finally get into a clearer area only 400 yards from where we started.
Crawling under blowdown in 3 inches of water with a half inch frozen crust tests ones resolve very quick. We stopped at this point for a break as we were now prehypothermic ourselves and needed to refuel. It was a great night clear sky, stars forever but crisp and cold, after eating and putting on dry clothes we pressed on for about a couple miles with no sign or clues yet.
The lost mountain bikers were in sporadic contact with the CP via cell but not enough to ping the exact location (early in that capability). There were 6 other hasty teams out scrambling around that night and of course we were listening to their progress on the radio, sounds like we had the worst tasking. Not a surprise as the joke is I always get the worst terrain, we could be in city park and they will give me the only swamp portion but thats another story.
We get caught in another section of trail for 200 yards of blowdown which killed another hr. After we exit that jungle gym wall we found ourselves by a lake. We started yelling and then got a call from the cp that they had heard us but did not have our direction.
We dug out some skyblazer flares and started to light up the night sky. Turns out they were halfway around the lake from us. 2 other teams were in the area. We stared to converge on the subjects. We didnt know the state they were in other than they were cold and wet so we put it in high gear and went waste deep in half frozen swamp to cut the angle to them. Soon we were in voice contact.
We made contact at about 4:00 approx. What we found were mid stage hypothermic patients who were in the late stages of shivering and their cell had just died. They had only spandex on. There was no shelter or fire. They tried to light one several times and couldnt. Their fire lighting attempts consisted of trying to light wet half inch diameter sticks directly with the bic (seriously its true).
At this point the EMT in me kicked in and called in 2 seriously in trouble people and we need a helo extract immediately. The call came back this was not possible as all helo's were either down or in use.
While all this was going on I got my 2 team members to start a fire size large and get a shelter up. They got to work with the folding saws and chopper blades and in short order had batonned dry wood and got some tinder going. The 2 subjects said it was impossible to get a fire going in these conditions. The were about to get a lesson the wouldnt soon forget in rapid survival fire building, my guys even used THEIR bic to light it. I got to work cutting off spandex and getting them into dry layers, we all carry spare clothes for the subjects I ripped into their packs and started pilfering what I could. I managed to get them into expensive fleece head to toe as well as a wind block layer, we also carry closed cell foam to insulate them from the ground and conductive heat loss. We managed to stop conductive , radiation, convection and evaporation heat loss in record time, that left respiration and theres not much we could do about that at the time. We had to dress them as all their dexterity was gone and the hallucinations had started. Their pulse rates were shallow and rapid, we were in danger of loosing them in front of our eyes.
Just then another team showed up and I got them to work getting firewood and getting hot food on ASAP. We propped them up by the fire (lunatic pagan ritual size by this time) and kept them conscious, gave them hot liquid jello. We got them into the shelter in thin sleeping bags, reflective blankets, chemical handwarmers in the neck, pit and groin and waited. The call came back we were getting an extract at 06:30.
By the time the helo came calling they were coming out of stage 2 hypothermia into stage 1 but still had heartbreat irregularities. I loaded them into the chopper and took another medic and off we went. Upon landing they were rushed to the paramedics waiting, I did a full medical handover and off they went lights and sirens. The helo made 4 trips back to haul out three teams of three safe and sound but mildly hypothermic themselves. By this time it was quite a production at the CP, family, 3 media outlets and the typical disaster spectator junkies. I dodged media wanting interviews on my way to the CP to debrief police and management team, media is not my thing.
Turns, out during the debrief we found out one of them had blown a tire with no way to fix, decided to take a "shortcut" through the hurricane blowdown. They got turned around and kept going getting themselves into the middle of nowhere. They of course abandoned their $3000 bikes long ago. I got home about 9:am took a looong hot shower and went to work after my nights fun. Afterwards I spent money and time replacing drying repairing and prepping the gear for the next call which came only 3 days later.
They ended up no worse for wear after a day in the hospital. My gear I lent them however, I never got back, another $150 down the drain by an unpaid volunteer (so be it). If they didnt not have a cell phone with them and coverage it would have been a body recovery.
Lessons as I see it:
Poor planning and prep.
Basic gear not taken.
Stayed out too long.
Unfamiliar with area.
Basic survival skills non existent.
Skam
I ran to my car and rushed it back to the off duty paramedic and he proceeded to put on the gloves from it and started inspecting everybody. He then had me hold her neck still because she kept looking over at her daughters and the suburban. After 15-20 minutes, the ambulance showed up and they put neck braces on everyone and called it a day. 
. At least lost hikers arent in another time zone generally.