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Diary - June 2008
Monday 9th June - Casualty Care
Dave's guest entry:
'Colin had kindly arranged for a light aircraft to crash in the fields above Hayfield, scattering 7 casualties in its wake. My party was tasked to walk up the field paths from the village to the likely location of the aircraft in case the location information was incorrect or any of the casualties had decided to stumble down to the village to get help.
By the time we arrived at the casualty site, other hill parties were already on scene dealing with three casualties. Our first task was to search for the remaing casualties. Our hill party split into two and, either luckily or unluckily depending on your point of view, quickly found two casualties. Mine was lying groaning in the grass. A quick assessment showed that he had a broken pelvis, broken lower leg and broken arm. Rather unhelpfully, our party casualty care kit was with the other half of our party, so I was left with just my own presonal first aid kit, which is not really designed for this level of casualty (applying an aspirin and a dressing seemed likely to be the equivalent of moving the deck chairs on the Titanic).
As an interim measure I had Neil support the head and c-spine, whilst Chris and I used my paramo jacket as an emergency pelvic splint. Chris radioed our situation back to the incident controller and soon more kit and people started to arrive. This was just in time, as the casualty helpfully lost consciousness at this point. I was able to insert an airway, deliver oxygen, apply proper splints to the pelvis, leg and arm. Soon after, we were able to put the casualty into a vacuum mattress, on to a stretcher and evacuate to the roadhead.
All in all, a geat exercise: demanding and rewarding.'
Saturday 14th June 2008 14:14hrs – Callout
Saturday afternoon and I was in the middle of my children’s busy social diary. They had spent the morning at football / dancing and now my wife had just taken my daughter out to a party, leaving me with my son for the afternoon. Five minutes after they had walked out of the door, my phone jumped in to life with a callout. The message said that it was a snatch callout for anyone who could respond within 30 minutes. I called my wife on her mobile to see if she could quickly get back and take my son with her as well, but I couldn’t get through to her phone, so this one would have to go on without me.
It turned out that a Mountain Biker had come off his bike on the Edale Cross track and broken his arm. The callout involved going up the track in the Land Rover, splinting his arm and then driving him back down to the waiting Ambulance at the road head.
I never did find out how they got his bike back down!
Sunday 15th June 2008 09:00hrs – Kinder Trog Fell Race Cover
Today is the day of the annual Kinder Trog Fell race. A grueling 16 mile race with 3500 feet of unnecessary ascent, which goes right around the Kinder plateau edge path and throws in a few extra peaks just for the fun of it. We had been asked to provide safety cover for the race, which meant getting up there before the race started and waiting there until all the runners had gone round.
I was placed in a team with Chris as leader and we were tasked with covering the Downfall, the middle point of the race. We took the option of getting dropped off at the bottom of the hill to make a day of it and made our way up to the downfall.
After a long slog we arrived at the Downfall and took the chance to grab a bite to eat. As soon as we rattled a sandwich tin, the local “killer” sheep appeared, hell bent on trying to prize our food from us. It was a battle of wills, these sheep were good, but they weren’t getting our sandwiches!
Soon the first runners started to go through. There was a large field today, which seemed to go on and on. There were a few familiar faces running past, including Darren, our team leader. We gave him suitable words of encouragement.
Finally all the runners had gone through and all we had to do now was wait until we got the radio message telling us to clear the route on to the next checkpoint. However the message we received was not what we were expecting. The next team had picked up a runner with an injured ankle. We packed up our gear began the trek over to them at full speed. However as we were en route we heard that the Land Rover had been dispatched to meet them. They were at the top of the Edale Cross track, and the Land Rover would obviously get there long before we would, so we eased off on the pace. The runner was patched up and driven back down to race control. As the race had now passed us and moved on to its last few hills, we decided to walk back to the hut.
Wednesday 18th June 2008 19:30hrs – Training
It had been a busy day at work for me. I had ended up working late at Liverpool and was due back there first thing in the morning to finish off. The training session tonight was on the hill, and I just managed to get home in time to grab my gear and head out. We received a text message telling us to RV at Chunal, where we would find out more information about the exercise. By the time I made it to the RV, an initial fast team had been deployed to the incident. The scenario was a couple of casualties had been found a short distance in to the moors. One of them had injured himself whilst riding his mountain bike (this exercise had been put together a long time before last Saturday’s callout to an injured mountain biker).
I was sent up with a team to carry the equipment requested by the initial response team. The casualty sites were not too far from the road, as we only have a limited amount of time on an evening exercise and we don’t want to spend the whole night walking to the site.
At the first Cas site Pete and AJ were looking after Vinney, who had an injury to his arm. He had him sorted out and was ready to walk him back down to the road head.
At the other Cas site, things were a little more complicated. Charlie had
managed to tangle himself up in his bike and with the addition of some
heavy makeup,
fake blood and a spare sheep’s leg bone had given us a convincing broken
leg to deal with.
He was packed up on to a stretcher and carried back down to the Ambulance. There was even time for Dave to throw in a collapsed rescuer to add a bit more confusion. The defibrillator was rushed to him to attempt a resuscitation.
After a couple of hours of rescuing in the rain, I finally headed home to see the family and get to bed ready for an early start to work in Liverpool the next day.
Thursday 19th June 2008 01:20hrs – Callout
I had only been asleep for a couple of hours after the exercise when I was woken up by my phone ringing at me to say there was a callout. I had a long think about this one, but as I had to be in Liverpool early that morning, I decided it wouldn’t be safe for me to go on this one and then drive straight down the motorway for a couple of hours.
The team were called out to search around Stockport for a missing vulnerable lady. She eventually turned up outside of the search area.
Friday 27th June 2008 20:00hrs – Team Meeting
Team Meeting night tonight. Due to a prior commitment I was unable to attend, so the meeting went ahead without me.
Saturday 28th June 2008 15:20hrs – Callout
It had been a quiet Saturday. I had spent the morning driving my children around to their various Saturday activities and had finally arrived home for a quiet afternoon. Not long after I sat down my phone started playing its text tune. “Callout RV Hut”. I sent a reply to Darren to let him know I was on my way, then started running around the house getting all my gear together. I quickly left and headed off to the hut.
When I arrived it was quite quiet. The board said there was a walker with an ankle injury at the bottom of William Clough. Two teams had already been dispatched and they were just gathering up the remaining people around the hut to make a third team to help with the carry off. The initial replies to this callout had been quite slow and early on it had looked like there wouldn’t be enough people for the carry off, so Darren had asked the Glossop team to help out. Not long after I arrived, the first of the Glossop team turned up.
Paul briefed them with the location of the Casualty and they set off. We gathered up the rest of our team into one party and we followed on.
The injured man was at the bottom of William Clough which is only about ¾ mile from the road, but up hill at full pace soon had my heart rate pumping. As we drew near to the location we saw the stretcher party heading towards us.
We met them at a hand over through a gate, where we have to pass the stretcher hand to hand.
On the way back the injured man was telling us he had slipped at the top of some steps and fell back on his leg. When he tried to get up his lower leg was at a rather unnatural angle….that will generally do it!
Apparently he was with a friend when the accident happened and neither of them could get a mobile signal to raise the alarm. Fortunately they were helped by a passing walker who was able to get further down the hill to where they could get a mobile signal and call for help.
Unfortunately for us they asked for an ambulance rather than asking for the Police and then Mountain Rescue. This meant that the Ambulance service sent a road Ambulance and a Paramedic had to hot foot it with all their gear to the man. Once the control realized where he was they decided they would need Mountain Rescue to carry the man out and called us.
The path down the side of the reservoir is quite narrow and it was
tricky to fit the stretcher party down it.
Between the two teams we managed a smooth carry off and delivered him to the waiting ambulance.
All that was left was to get back to the hut and clear up the gear, waiting for the next one.