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Diary - January 2008
Monday 7th January 2007 19:30hrs – Casualty Care Training
A gentle session to ease us in to the new year. Firstly we were given the Casualty care bags to go through and familiarise ourselves with the contents and where to find them in a hurry. Then we went on to look at our bag full of different vacuum splints. There’s only really one way to do that:
Finally we practiced with the Kendrik Extraction Device. This is a splint that wraps around a casualty and protects their neck and spine while we remove them from a difficult location. This caused great amusement while we strapped various team members in to the contraption. Not all of them in the correct manor!
After we had had enough fun, we headed downstairs to the pub for a spot of post splinting refreshment.
Saturday 12th January 2007 15:00hrs – Callout
Middle of the afternoon on a Saturday and I am tiling my bathroom floor. I receive a message on my phone to say that we have a Callout in Edale. I am right at a crucial point, so it takes me a few minutes to pack up and get going. Mike was ahead of me, here is his account:
Saturday afternoon – a quiet day at home is interrupted by the phone – “callout remote RV “. A quick call to see what kit is needed and I shoot down to the hut to meet the team vehicles. We quickly load up and head off to Edale. Buxton and Edale Teams are running two different incidents at the same time, helicopters have been called – but plan ‘B’ is needed. We are plan ‘B’. If the helicopters can’t get in we’re going to have to carry the casualties off. Those who are familiar with the diary will realise just how important plan ‘B’ is, we had to use our plan ‘B’ when the RAF couldn’t get into us on our last shout.
The top of Kinder is covered in snow – and as a result seems pretty
busy. Edale is packed full of MR vehicles and ambulances, and we are quickly
tasked to the more serious of the two casualties. A walker has fallen into
Crowden Brook; he’s suffering from dislocated knee, probable fractured
femur, a head injury and hypothermia. An RAF Seaking is on its way from Leconfield,
and arrives as we are half way up the hill. We stop to watch him being winched
into the helicopter, then radio control for further instructions. We are
still needed to carry the kit off.
Job done, it’s back to the hut to tidy up, off for a quick pint; then most of the Team have to go home to get ready for the Team’s Annual Dinner at The Royal Hotel later tonight. (They need a lot of preparation to scrub up half way decent so it really was a quick pint).
Meanwhile, I spent most of the afternoon stood around at control being held in reserve. As there were two jobs on at the same time, both requiring helicopters and the police helicopter on site, it was like watching air traffic control organise who was going where. Here is my photo of the Sea King winching the casualty from Crowden Brook (at full zoom!):
After the Sea King had left to take the Casualty to hospital, the air ambulance helped bring some of the heavy kit back down. Here is a video of it taking off from control.
We packed up and all managed to make it back for our Annual meal that evening,
without any more callouts.
Sunday 27th January 2008 08:20hrs – Exercise
So far this month I had managed to miss both the Wednesday training session on search techniques and the monthly meeting, due to commitments with my real job. I had rushed back from a meeting in London on the Friday and got back after the team meeting had finished, but crucially just in time for a quick pint as the rest of the team were coming out of the meeting. By all accounts I had the best of the evening as the rest of them had been debating changes to the team constitution!
The brief for today’s training session was to meet at the hut for a 9am start and an all day joint exercise with Glossop team. So when I received a text message at 08:20 advising me that the exercise had started, I was taken a little by surprise. I stuffed the last of my porridge into my mouth and ran around the house gathering the last of my things, jumped into my car and set off for the hut.
I arrived to the usual scene of people milling around, signing on to the deployment system and getting themselves ready to go out. I stumbled over the pile of large rucksacks to get into the hut and signed on to the deployment system. I was soon put in a team with Colin, Hamish and Ryan. As part of the joint exercise, we also were assigned Harry from Glossop team. The idea was that a few members from each team swapped over to see how the other team operated. Unfortunately for Harry, he got us.
The other thing that made today unusual was that a camera crew was following us around. They had been making a film about cave rescue and were invited to carry on the theme by filming with us for the day. The crew were a little late setting up and were just ready as we drove out in our Landrover. I gave them my best “Going out on a callout” face as we drove past.
The scenario today was a common one which both teams often face. A missing walker, on his way from Snake Pass to Edale. We were given a nice easy route in to Kinder via Monks road, a relatively flat, if a little muddy, track. We followed our route, over Mill Hill to the Kinder plateau and on to the Downfall.
As we went we searched the Edge path and all the possible hiding places. As we reached Sandy Hayes (the steepest section of Kinder), we saw another team coming up, carrying all the heavy gear. Looks like we had got away with an easy assignment today. They were closely followed by the camera crew, who started filming as soon as they got to the top.
We left them to carry on their filming and headed off to the Downfall. The route hadn’t been a difficult one, so we made good time and were soon at the Downfall. The downside of this was that we had to wait for four other teams to get there before we got our next instructions. It was going to be a cold wait. The Downfall is the area where the Kinder river flows over the edge of the plateau into a waterfall. At this time of year there is plenty of water in it and the wind blows it back up on to where we were waiting. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The previous day you could see it blowing back up from down in the valley bottom. Today it was more like a cold light rain. A few hours of this was going to be like an experiment in hypothermia.
Eventually after a couple of hours of stamping our feet to keep warm, the other teams joined us and we were given instructions to join up and sweep search the plateau. After about 20 minutes of searching, we heard a call on the radio to say that another team had found the casualty. We made our way over there and joined what was now a very busy Cas site.
Both teams were there along with the camera crew. I finished the last of my food and waited to find out what the plan was from here. As there were plenty of people to carry off the stretcher, our team was tasked with escorting the camera crew back down by the shortest route. This went well with the exception of one small incident. As we got to the bottom of the hill, we were slightly ahead of the camera crew who had stopped to do some filming. I sat down on a small wall to catch a rest. Ryan came over and sat down beside me, however he misjudged the width of the wall and the weight of his rucksack took him backwards over the wall. To make matters worse he had a soft landing in a large pool of mud!
We made our way to the road, expecting to find a Land Rover waiting to take us back to base. However everyone had arranged to RV at a pub half way between the two teams bases where the stretcher team were coming off the hill. It meant a log walk back to base to pick up a vehicle and head up to meet the others. Still the pub had nice warm fires and great beer. Just what we needed at the end of a long day.