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Diary

Monday 5th June 2006 – Casualty Care

Another excellent session tonight from Doctor Ian, this time on Airways and Breathing problems. He goes over the procedures we use to check for Airway problems and how to stabilise the C-spine in cases of trauma. As part of his training he shows us the best ways of securing an Airway using our kit and how to ventilate with a bag and mask. Once again Ian’s over realistic dummy makes an appearance.

Darren starts to get too many answers correct and is soon invited to give us a demonstration. He does an excellent example of how to carry out a jaw thrust and ventilation.

Ian moves on to problems with obstructions in the Airway and how to deal with them. He goes through a range of options ending with getting a volunteer to demonstrate the Heimlich manoeuvre.

As I am having trouble spelling Heimlich, if you have any better captions for this photo, e-mail them the webmaster.

We finish off with some hands on practical and the evening ends in the usual way.

Sunday 11th June 2006 – Lyme Park

The team has been asked to attend the Lyme Park show this weekend. I have volunteered to do the Sunday Morning slot along with Anthony, Nick, Vinnie and Pete.

We chatted to visitors, explaining the work we do and demonstrated the equipment we use. It was a good opportunity to show people what we do on a hot sunny day.

Wednesday 14th June 2006 – Training

Our training tonight is a compulsory session on Water Hazard Awareness. You need to attend this session at least once every two years to be allowed to carry out searches near water hazards. The training isn’t about rescuing drowning people from the water, as it’s quite unlikely that we would be on scene quick enough to fish anyone out. It is more about how to recover a team-mate who has got in to difficulties while searching at the water’s edge, allowing us to carry out these searches without putting ourselves in unnecessary danger.

Mountain Rescue in general is getting an increasing number of calls to work near water hazards. In the past we would have just expected members to use their common sense when working near water. Now we have a formal procedure which involves two spotters and a buddy for every searcher.

We ran through the procedures and had another look at the new kit we use when searching. Last year we invested £2000 on two sets water hazard equipment. A set consists of four Personal Floatation Jackets, four throw ropes and two long carbon fibre poles. The session covers everything you need to know about how to work near water without getting wet!

The evening ends in the now traditional way with someone recounting the story of how Bernie fell in the Kinder reservoir. An event which he insist took place over 25 years ago. It just seems to get better every time it is told.

Sunday 18th June 2006 – Fell Race Cover

Today we are providing cover for the Kinder Trog, a gruelling 17 mile fell race over most of the local hills. I had spent several nights this week installing new IT kit, so it’s always a relief when you turn up for an exercise and it all works. Today I am in a team with Chris and Mike. Mike is the party leader and I offer to do the Casualty Care. Our job today is to go to Edale Cross and wait around in case any runners are injured on their way round.

We load up in one of the Landrovers and get a lift with Kinder 4 up to Moorgate, from there we make our way to Edale Cross.

The weather all week has been very hot, we have even been asked to take extra water in case any runners become dehydrated. However as usual, as soon as we get to the top the weather turns and the temperature begins to drop. We settle in for a long day, Chris goes to ground until we are needed.

Mike takes a more relaxed approach. "5 across: Strange individual who enjoys running up hills for pleasure (10)"

We wait… and wait… and wait. Some spectators arrive, and finally the marshals show up, just before the first runner arrives.

There is a long gap until the next runner goes through, then the rest of the field starts to go past.

Finally the sweeper goes past. All the runners have gone through without any injuries, at least none that have forced anyone to stop. There seem to be a lot of bloody knees and elbows, but fell runners are a tough bunch. Anyone who is going to spend two or three hours running up hill is not going to be put off by a bit of blood! We now have to wait until the sweeper gets to the next check point, then we can clear that part of the route and head home.

We wait for the call to move on, but it doesn’t come. Dave, Andrea and Charlie from Kinder 4 appear over the hill.

They radio in to say they have cleared their section and are told to head back to base. We check to see why we are still waiting and find out that two runners are missing between our check point and the next one. We head off and search the valley on the way to the next point. It is steep and an easy place to get lost, but we get to the other side without finding anyone. We radio back to base to let them know how we are doing only to find out that the last check point have counted two runners too many, so we put it down to an admin error. The only evidence we turned up was this Jelly Baby, a common runner food. We photographed it and recorded its GPS reference for evidence.

Finally we met up with Chrissie, Neil and Anthony from Kinder 6 and headed back to base. It looks as though they had had a similar day to us!

Friday 23rd June 2006 – Team Meeting

This month’s team meeting is a week earlier than usual. We are having a quiz night after the meeting and the venue was booked for our normal slot, so we have brought it forward a week. This part of the year is traditionally a quite time for us as a lot of our callouts are caused by bad weather. The current dry spell has produced only one minor callout this month so we are expecting the meeting to be over quickly. Things never quite happen as you expect and it turns out that two members have resigned and another has been asked to stand down due to his lack of attendance at callouts. It has always been a condition of membership that you need to attend a minimum percentage of the callouts in a year, in order to keep the team effective. However, working alongside people in a team like this means you make strong friendships and it is always very difficult when someone is asked to stand down. Following this announcement a lengthy discussion took place over how we measure attendance at callouts and training, and how this would be effected by quiet spells like the one we are currently experiencing. Finally Ken steps in to wrap up the discussion and the meeting moves on.

Once we have finished the meeting, we move on to the bar and buffet. Nigel has put a quiz together which we do our best with. My team seems to do much better at the buffet than the quiz, although we don’t quite live up to our team name “last”. Well done to the Saga boys who have now won for two years on the trot. They obviously have too much time on their hands!