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Diary - December 2008
Monday 1st December 2008 – Casualty Care Training
Tonight’s training began with a look at a new lighter stretcher. It
was definitely lighter than our traditional Bell stretcher, but as with most
of the lighter versions, a little more awkward to carry. The rest of the
evening was taken up with an outdoor session on Primary surveys in Winter
conditions. We certainly got that, as it was freezing. It demonstrated how
difficult it can be to do something as simple as measure a pulse when the
Casualty is cold.
Thursday 4th December 2008 05:00hrs - Callout
I was woken in what felt like the middle of the night by my phone playing its text message tune. I stumbled around until I worked out how to switch it off. It was a callout, there had been a weather warning the previous night and looking out of the window, it was freezing and just starting to snow. I had to set off for London in a couple of hours and wouldn’t be able to make this one. Afterwards, I asked the team for some of their accounts of the morning. Here are a couple:
Phil:
Tinged with guilt about not being able to join fellow team members on the callout – I, along with other family members were suffering from a case of Sickness & Diarrhoea (Too much info! - Alan).
As it happened, I missed the first text message, but heard the second more as a result of other family members shouting – ‘answer your phone?’ & ‘what time is it?’ (or words to that effect). I’d changed the ring tone to blast out rock music at the loudest setting possible, as I keep missing the usual beep tone one.
‘It’s ok, it’ll just be the lads from work, saying they were stuck at the airport due to the snow’.
With all the weather warnings in place, and constant media warnings about 20 cm’s snow and freezing blizzard conditions predicted I was expecting the call from the lads from work as a prank to say their meeting was off and they were stuck at Manchester airport – could I come and rescue them? They were supposed to be checking in at 5.30am.
All of a sudden I had thought (rare I know). My son’s explorer scout group were supposed to be doing a night walk – God I hope it’s not them being lost or something worse? My son hadn’t gone as he was suffering just like me (he must have been ill as he wasn’t even playing on the computer that evening). But they wouldn’t be that stupid, not with the predicted weather.
So I eventually plucked up the courage to go and find the phone and see what the commotion was all about now that everyone was awake. It was 5.30am and it was ‘CALL OUT RV HUT….’ Unfortunately I wasn’t going anywhere in my condition, so I’d have to miss this one.
Luckily it appeared to be a short incident with the casualties being located relatively quickly. Why they were out on Kinder at night, with such weather conditions predicted is a mystery to me. But well done to all those that volunteered to go out and help rescue them. Well-done chaps. As it turned out, my first thought of work calling me was not too far off the mark. As it turned out, they were having minor drama’s of their own which sort of transpired into events as depicted in the John Candy film ‘Trains, Planes & Automobiles’– but that’s another story.
Dave:
I was woken by the chirp of my mobile phone in what seemed like the middle of the night. It was the middle of the night or at least 05:00 in the morning. “Callout at the hut”. I tried to wake up, got dressed, made the flask and sandwiches and jumped in the car. Excellent news – not only the middle of the night, but also freezing cold and snowing.
I arrive at the hut to discover that 4 walkers have reported themselves lost on Kinder, having set off at 20:00 the previous evening. This makes it into an urgent job, as the risk of severe hypothermia is high in these conditions. I’m allocated Kinder 1, with Mike, Pete and Ryan. With no time for a cup of tea (sorry Pete and Ryan!), we set off in mobile 1. Colin drops us off at the filter house and we start walking up the side of the reservoir with the idea of going up William Clough.
We’ve barely been going 5 minutes when a figure looms out of the darkness. Not surprisingly perhaps, it’s a member of the casualty party. He’s in reasonable condition, although tired and hungry. Pete administers casualty care, in the shape of a Mars bar, and we find out about the remainder of the casualty party. Our man is convinced that they are coming down Sandy Heys and are probably half way down by now. We radio back to base with this information, asserting only an 80% confidence factor to it (luckily, as it turns out). We’re also informed that one member of the casualty party is very tired and cold, which encourages Pete to think about his potential treatment, and the rest of us to increase our urgency. We direct our casualty to the waiting landrover and adjust our search pattern to now go up Sandy Heys. Whilst all this has been going on, we’ve been overtaken by search dog Ian, with Chris, who are tasked to search the area between Sandy Heys and William Clough.
Mike navigates up through the snow. As we climb Sandy Heys we keep expecting to come across the casualty party, or at least hear some shouts or see some torches. We’re over half way up, with no sign of the casualty party when we hear a report on the radio saying that Kinder 2 has located them near the reservoir. It turns out that they decided to come down William Clough and not Sandy Heys, thus avoiding both us and the search dog.
We plod down the hill, skating on patches of ice as we go, and get a lift back to the hut. It’s good to see all the casualty party back safe and sound after what could have been a fatal trip. A quick cup of tea and we’re all off to go to work.
Saturday 6th December 2008 12:00hrs - Collecting at Decathlon
Mountain Rescue teams are completely self funded. We receive no income from the government and have to meet the costs of running the team entirely by donations from the general public. The up side of this is that we are an independent body and get to choose how we operate. The downside is that we have to commit a lot of our time to standing around on a cold day collecting funds for the team. Today that is exactly what we were doing. Decathlon in Stockport kindly let us collect over the weekend. I had offered to do a three hour shift on Saturday afternoon.
It was a very busy weekend as people were out Christmas shopping and the public were very generous with their support.
Wednesday 10th December 2008 19:30hrs – Training
Tonight was scheduled for our annual local knowledge quiz. This is always one of our usual Christmas warm up events, which Janet & Nigel had put together. Before this, Lofty had arranged for Dave Alport a rescue equipment manufacturer to answer questions on his new light weight stretcher we had been trialling.
When someone starts a talk with “I’ve been known to go on a bit, so stop me when you’ve heard enough”, you know what kind of evening you are in for! Dave told us all about his new stretcher, which did take a while, as we kept asking more and more questions. It seems the one thing that interests all of us is the promise of not having to carry the really heavy, but sturdy Bell stretcher up the hill.
Unfortunately, we asked so many questions, we ran out of time for Janet to run the quiz.
Friday 19th December 2008 – Carol Singing
Every year we treat the residents of Hayfield to a few of our well chosen Carols. We also raise a few funds towards the team as we go round.
If you are feeling up to it, here are a couple of our best songs (I’ll spare you the really bad ones)!
Tuesday 30th December 2008 18:30hrs – Callout
It had been a very quiet Christmas for us this year. We usually have a couple of callouts over the Christmas break, as visitor numbers increase. The traditional Boxing Day outing to walk off the previous day’s eating usually means a busy day for us. But this year all had been quiet so far. Finally our Christmas callout arrived.
Tonight a man had been caught out by the failing light, when the batteries on his GPS failed, leaving him lost somewhere on the Kinder plateau. Due to the fact that his route was a circuit of the plateau and we didn’t have a location for the man, teams from Glossop, Buxton and Edale were also involved in the search.
I was put in to a search party and sent off in one of the Land Rovers to clear a route from Edale cross Kinder Low. As we were driving up the track to Edale Cross, we heard on the radio that Edale team had quickly located the man.
We turned round and headed back to base, a surprisingly quick end to a quiet Christmas break.