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Diary - March 2008
Tuesday 4th March 2008 19:30hrs – Casualty Care Training
An interesting, if a little gory session from Dr Ian tonight. He was covering the anatomy and possible injuries to the airway. You could tell how the session was going to go from Ian’s opening slide, a picture of a man who had managed to blow the front of his face off with a firework! Not quite the sort of injury we are used to.....but you never know.
A very informative session, which brought back memories of my old A-level biology course. Maybe I would have found the session a bit easier if I had passed it!
Wednesday 12th March 2008 19:30hrs – Training
We have recently been trying to improve the realism of our training sessions, so tonight was a chance for us all to practice our casualty site procedures in a realistic environment. Mike had organised an outdoor session, with several of our more common types of casualty to deal with. We were sent up in teams of four to deal with each scenario as we would if it were a real casualty. To add to the realism, we were carrying this out by torch light in the pouring rain, just like normal. The casualties included Angina, a drug overdose and a Pneumothorax. The realism prize of the evening going to Colin, who was supposed to have crashed his mountain bike. He was covered in fake blood and had a big hole in his bike helmet.
We had to diagnose each casualty, treat them and arrange an evacuation with base on the radio. It was an excellent evening, despite getting thoroughly soaked.
Tuesday 25th March 2008 18:47hrs – Callout
Tuesday evening and I am sat at home after a day at work. I had noticed the hill opposite my house was covered in mist and commented on how low the cloud base was tonight. As soon as those words left my mouth, my phone jumped into life with a text message, “Standby, Neale”. This normally means that another team has a job and they think they may need more help. I took the opportunity to get ready and then sat waiting to find out if we were to be stood down, or if I was going out for the night. By now the daylight had gone and the combination of mist and darkness was not looking good. Another text message came through, it was a callout. I jumped in my car and made my way to the hut.
When I got there, only a few of the team had arrived before me. I signed on to the deployment system and got myself ready to go out. We didn’t have a lot of information at this stage. All we had heard was that a group of six people had left Glossop in the morning, passed the Kinder downfall in mid afternoon and headed out onto the plateau. After this they had wandered around lost for most of the afternoon, until they called Mountain Rescue and asked for help. The controller who received the call had guessed that they were somewhere near the southern edges and had called out Edale and Buxton teams to cover this area. We were tasked with covering the western edges of Kinder, in case they had managed to get completely lost and headed out in our direction.
I was put in a team with Vinny, Paul and Pete and we were tasked with searching the Three Knolls Path. Other teams were sent to search the other main escape routes off the plateau. We were driven up to Moorgate and set off on our route.
The weather was closing in. It was dark, misty and just beginning to snow. We searched for an hour until we had a call on the radio to hold our position while a possible sighting was investigated. We waited in the snow until finally we got another call. It was a false alarm, so we carried on with our search. We continued up the track, our torches forming thin columns of light through the gloom. I was trying out my new GPS mapping on my phone for the first time at night. You obviously need to be able to use a map and compass at night, but having a system that shows you exactly where you are on a map was extremely useful.
After another half hour of searching we received another hold message on the radio. This time it turned out to be a positive find and we were told to make our way back to the Land Rovers and head back to base.
Back at the hut we met up with the other members of the team, who had
been held back in case we needed to carry the stretcher and heavy gear
up to
the Cas site. They had an evening of sitting around waiting to be deployed.
After
packing the wet gear away, we had a quick debrief and caught up with
the events of the night. The night was finished off by drying out with
a quick
pint in front of the open fire in the pub.
Here is a short video of the events of the evening:
Sunday 30th March 2008 07:30hrs – Exercise
It was an early start today. Phil and I had been asked to organise today’s exercise and had agreed to meet at 07:30, but as the clocks went forward last night it felt like a very early start. The weather had been awful yesterday, cold driving rain, but today it was clear blue skies. I’ll let Phil take over with his version of the day:
Phil: We wanted to do something slightly different, but still need to keep to Dave’s training criteria. So why not have a small corridor search cumulating in a multi-casualty scene, with an added twist of not having any helicopters available. Oh, and having some of the casualties have their medical conditions brought on due to the stress of the situation as the triage and treatment was underway (causing additional issues for the rescue teams). This could be complex, and open to criticism, but if it worked could be an interesting day? Hopefully it would mean a lot of team members getting hands on with first aid, and the more experienced casualty site officers having to deal with triage and site management. This would also mean having to make some harsh life or death decisions. Not an easy call, but one which a multi casualty situation could produce. Helicopters aren’t always available, and we shouldn’t assume they would be. With so many potential casualties out, not all would be able to get treated at the first go either. (In reality, other teams would also be deployed to assist).
To find enough willing volunteers to play casualties, friends and family were soon coerced with promises of mars bars, drink, friendly banter, picnic and an enjoyable stroll in the hills. Hopefully the recent bout of bad weather would improve and give us a rare warm sunny day for the actual exercise. Luckily it did.
With the clocks going forward, it was time to set off and RV with the casualties at the hut at 07.30hrs. Once we were half way up ‘Sandy Heyes’, Alan put the call through to Neale to turn the team out. Unknown to us, due to recent mobile phone coverage problems, Neale was going to use the back up system for calling the team out. This involves a cascaded phone call system, with team members calling the next person on the list. Shortly Alan would get call on his mobile. I never got mine, but someone kindly left a message on my landline’s answering machine.
The scenario basically was - A mixed party of nine, was participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, and is trekking across part of the Pennine Way. They would head off from Snake Summit the previous day; walk across to Mill Hill, up Ashop Rocks following the western edge path round to Sandy Heyes and on to the Downfall. They would then follow the Pennine Way down Grindsbrook, with the intention of camping in Edale. They failed to turn up so the alarm was raised. (Some team members might be starting to think they were having a sense of deja-vu following the callout a few days earlier – but that was honestly just a coincidence).
The intention was that the teams would do a quick corridor search and quickly pick up one of two planned incident sites, situated in the Kinder Gates region. These sites would have a mixture of various injuries and medical problems brought on by the situation. A couple of the casualties wouldn’t have any injuries, but would cause disruption to the attending team simply by moving around, getting in the way etc, unless they were looked after accordingly. All the casualties would be hypothermic after spending the night out.
Once we got to Kinder Gates, the group was split into two so that two casualty sites could be set up. Alan became stage director and threw some theatrical blood and wounds on people. Everyone got settled into position, donned their respective medi-alerts (lets see who actually finds these?) and waited for the teams to swarm over us. As it happened, it wasn’t long before the first team found half of the group at ‘Kinder Gates’, closely followed by Search Dog Ian (who was giving his dog a run out following her recent RTA). This is where the events would slowly unfold. As far as the exercise scenario went, on reaching the gates this is when the casualty party began bouldering on the rocks. Two of them fell off causing serious injuries (cas 1 - broken open femur and wrist) (cas 2 – Pneumothorax). A third unfortunate member rushed to save one of his mates who was falling, but stumbled and went crashing into the rocks (cas 3 – Lacerated head wound and dislocated shoulder). The group leader (cas 4 would also suffer from high blood pressure, which could develop later in the day depending on how events unfolded) was mortified. He stayed with these three mishaps while the rest went for help as they had no mobile phone signal. Colin soon had the casualty site sorted, with triage identifying the priorities and working out which order to evacuate them in.
It became apparent to Colin that the remainder of the casualty party had headed off down the Kinder River. At some point this would need to be searched. Meanwhile, Neale and his team were heading up the Kinder river so they too would soon reach the ‘Gates’, hopefully picking up the second cas site, which was about 100 metres away. These hypothermic casualties saw the approaching rescuers and started shouting (but alas to no avail. It might have been a nice clear day, but their cries for help were in-auditable). Once Neale met up with Colin’s now well established cas site 1, a redeployment and search direction was decided. Taking Search Dog Ian, the combined party set off down the Kinder River.
Me: I had gone off with the rest of the casualties and set up the next Cas site. We hid in the peat for what seemed like a very long time. We saw a few teams searching for us in the distance, and even spotted the search dog, but she was up wind of us and wouldn’t be able to pick up our scent from there. Eventually we heard over the radio that the other site had been found and that they were now looking for us. Finally we saw one of the teams walk past in the distance. We shouted, but as the wind was strong, our shouts were not carrying as far as the search team. It was really strange being on the other side of the search and seeing how close a team could be without being able to hear the casualties. The other strange thing was having excellent visibility. Usually when we are out, you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Finally, just as we were starting to get really cold, search dog Anya appeared. Ian had spotted us and pushed Anya down wind of us to help in her training, so that she could pick up our scent and bring him in. As a reward he gave her a squeaky toy to play with, which we had to listen to for the next hour!
Ian then went round and assessed the casualties and started to treat the more seriously injured. The casualties were excellent, they had all been briefed to tell them how to react and when to start getting worse symptoms and they played it perfectly. As more teams started to arrive, more problems appeared giving all of them something to do and the control a real headache in how to handle the logistics. This was a real test as it started out as a complicated scenario and got harder from there, with control having to work out how to manage two sites and decide who to evacuate and who to leave.
Phil: Once everyone was happy with the scenarios treatment and evacuation order, it was decided which lucky casualty would get the honour of having a short stretcher ride back to the Downfall before calling an end to the exercise.
Although slightly false with regards the number of injuries and the various twists/red herring medical problems (but not number of people), the exercise was designed to illustrate how multi casualty scenarios can develop into more complex management situations. Life & death calls need to be addressed. And although hoping for a happy outcome by using helicopters is the answer to all the rescuers prays, it isn’t always a possible solution. As rescuers, we shouldn’t forget that in reality even with additional teams deployed; not every ending is a happy ending.
Driving home that evening, all the casualty volunteers were impressed with our efforts. They may have sore feet, aching limbs and be looking forward to a nice bath and bed. For me and the rest of the team, we’d probably just be hoping not to get the call to deploy on a shout that evening….but we’d all be ready if it happened.