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Diary

Tuesday 2nd May 2006 – Casualty Care

Tonight’s session has managed to get one of the best turn outs of the year. We are having a training session from two A&E Consultant doctors. They obviously specialise in trauma and are able to give us an extra level of detail in how to perform primary and secondary surveys on casualties.

They brought a selection of unnecessarily realistic dummies and suitably gory stories. But to start with, they give us a detailed “hands on” description of how to check Vinny for injuries. They gave some additional tips on log rolling and putting collars on casualties with C-Spin injuries, before letting us loose on the dummies. One was to practice using a bag and mask to ventilate and the other was a model head with various realistic injuries. The idea was to check this head for injuries and getting used to how they felt. This turned out to more difficult than we first thought, as several people missed a large hole in the back of the head!

It turned out to be a really useful session, proven by the fact that even though we were supposed to finish at 9pm it we were still asking questions way passed 10pm. An excellent night!

While in the middle of writing this diary, my phone went off. This time it wasn’t a callout, it was a message from Colin, to let me know that he has now bought a lightweight rucksack – another one gone over to the dark side! Just to rub it in, he let me know that as it was such a beautiful day, he had been out on Kinder trying it out and now was sat outside the Royal. He attached this photo as evidence! Thanks, just what I need to cheer me up on the hottest day of the year!

Friday 5th May 2006 – Callout

It’s Friday afternoon, I have finished work and just collected my son from his childminder. As we are driving home my phone goes off – callout. My wife is taking our daughter to her weekly swimming lesson and will be about another half hour, so I call her parents and arrange to leave our son with them.

After dropping him off, I get my gear together make up a flask and some food and head out to the hut. The weather today has been really good with bright blue skies all day, but as we never know how long a callout will last, I have packed a rucksack full of waterproofs and fleeces, just in case it goes on into the night.

As I park up in the car park and make my way over to the hut I notice a larger police presence than usual. This often means that they are expecting a long drawn out search. The Derbyshire police helicopter is circling the area and as I arrive a group of Derbyshire’s finest are stood outside the hut.

Once I get inside, I register onto the computer to let control know I have arrived and am available to be deployed. The system says that a 69 year old lady is missing in the Kinder area. This is a huge area to search and as it appears that she has already been missing for over 24 hours, more teams are called in to help.

I check on the system and it shows that I am in Kinder 2 with John and Steve. John tells us that we are to search the main route over Ollersett moor. We collect our team kit and set off on foot.

As it is a warm evening other team members are showing up in some unusual team kit. Here Yatsey treats us to his designer “skin tight” gear. Nice!

We head up on to Ollersett Moor, checking the route as we go. In the distance we can see the Police helicopter searching the tops of Kinder.

Over the radio we hear that Glossop team has now been deployed over the Northern edges and down towards the Snake Pass. Buxton team are on their way and will be deployed shortly. The weather is good, but if she has been out for one night already, we need to cover the area as quickly as possible and find her tonight. As we move across the tops, john radios in to let control know that we will be out of radio contact as we go over the back of the hill.

Once we clear the route, we phone in (as there are no Radio comms here) to let base know. Vinney is dispatched to collect us so we can start on another route. After a short wait, while he consults his A to Z, he finds us and takes us back to base.

On returning to base, we are given another area to search. This time it is the paths around Mount Famine. We split up the area and decide who will be covering which path. Fortunately Matt from the Glossop team has arrived and he is allocated to go out with us. An extra pair of feet will help cover the ground more quickly.

Yatsey and his team have already been allocated another area and they head out as we are planning our routes.

Just as we are about to go, we hear a call over the radio to say that one of the Glossop teams has found the lady on the Snake Pass side of Kinder. The teams are all contacted and recalled back to base. The Glossop team escort the lady back to our base and we make ourselves scarce so that she doesn’t have a huge welcoming committee waiting for her. A good end to the night, with a good result.

Wednesday 10th May 2006 – Training

A big turn out tonight as it is Helicopter safety training. If you don’t attend this session for two years, you can’t fly in helicopters. So as you can imagine, there aren’t may people missing tonight. This is a perfect example of why we need a new headquarters, as we are overflowing with people. If there is a free space, someone is sat in it. The late comers have real trouble getting through the door.

The evening is made up of a powerpoint reminder of the types of helicopter available and when to use them, followed by a video of how to safely get in and out of helicopters. The video includes some very worried looking search and rescue dogs getting winched in to the helicopter and some more worrying facts about what to do if you’re in one when it crashes over water! Never mind eh!

Sunday 21st May 2006 - Exercise

The weather this week had been true exercise conditions. My new patio furniture was sat in an inch of water and last weekends’ camping with a couple of families from the team had turned into a complete wash out. I had sensibly decided to reproof my Paramo gear, which would hopefully mean that I would shed water like the proverbial “duck’s back”, however it also means that the kids will be going to school in waterproof coated uniforms for the next few weeks, as the next few loads that go into the washing machine get the same treatment. I just hope their friends are jealous when they get to play out in the rain.

I woke early on the Sunday made an appetising lunch and packed my rucksack. It was a 9am start at the hut, so I made my way over, pushed my way into a crowed room and put my boots on. Soon Geoff came into the room and asked Pete and Nigel to go into the “Bunker” for a briefing. The objective of these exercises is to practice possible real life scenarios and as Pete and Nigel are on the “Reserve Operational Group”, at some point they will have to manage a callout if there are no other Exec members available. They were given the scenario and left to it.

We all crowded round the PC, waiting to see who they decided we would be going out with.

A quick check of the system showed that I was party leader of Kinder 3 with Mike, Chris and Pat. I was summoned in to the Bunker for a briefing with the other Party Leaders. The scenario was that a 19 year old girl had been missing overnight after attempting a circular route around the Kinder edge path. We were all given parts of her route to clear, obviously I was given Sandy Heys, the steepest part of Kinder to clear. They must think I need the exercise! I briefed my team and we sorted out the roles, Mike was Casualty Care, Chris was navigating and I was on the radios. We then made our way with Kinder two to the Filter House to begin our route.

We set off and began to make our way along our route.

Kinder 2 were just ahead of us and soon they disappeared up William Clough on their route.

We stared to make our way up Sandy Heys, only to find out that we needed to stop to give IT advice to Mike’s wife on the way. I will be forwarding the invoice for my expensive advice “Switch it off and on again!”.

We carried on up the hill.

As we were going up the hill, we started to get the feeling that something was following us. I turned round quickly to realise that we did have someone behind us.

I thought they were supposed to be frightened of humans. This one obviously had decided that if it got really close, it wouldn’t get shot! We finally out ran the Grouse and made our way to the top. Just before we got there we heard on the radio that Kinder 5 had found the casualty…..and it was only 10:50am. This could be the earliest finish ever! The only problem was that the casualty was on the other side of Kinder. We waited to find out if we would be told to make our way back down and drive round, only to be told to make our way over to the Cas Site which ever way we could. As Neale in Kinder 2 had the keys the Filter house gate, our only option was to make our way over on foot. A journey of about 90 minutes.

Meanwhile at the Cas Site……

Dave had set up as Site Officer, Geoff had carried out Cas Care (which was a bit ironic, as the casualty was his daughter) and they settled in for a long wait.

We made our way around the edge path through the mist and rain.

Back at the Cas Site, they waited…..

We pushed on as the weather closed in further…….

At the Cas Site another party arrived with the stretcher and vacuum splints and the casualty was loaded on to the stretcher.

We carried on making our way over.

Finally they started to carry the casualty off to the waiting Landrovers.

This meant that we were following the stretcher party further round the hill. We finally made it to the Original Cas Site. This meant that we were catching them up. As we followed their tracks, we noticed that they had “sledged” the stretcher down the steeper parts of the decent.

Finally we caught up with them……just as they were loading the stretcher in to the Landrover!

We made our way over, to the amusement of the other teams and all headed back to base.

All in all, a nice day out in the rain!

Friday 26th May 2006 – Team Meeting

It’s the last Friday of the month, so it must be time for the team meeting. There are a few notable absences tonight as it is the beginning of the half term holidays and quite a few people seem to have gone away. The most obvious change is that Peter, our team Secretary, who normally takes the minutes, has been replaced by John. This may not seem like much of a change until you realise that John is half Peter’s height with twice as much hair!

The meeting seems to follow the format “Right, next report from the [insert role here] officer. Do we have anything? Oh, he’s away. Right on to the next one”. And repeat!

Finally we get to Chris, the fundraising officer. One of his roles is to oversee the plans for our new base. Initially Derbyshire County Council invited us to share a new development in the centre of Hayfield. This is an ideal location and would create a building offering facilities for ourselves and Derbyshire Countryside Services, a shop and café for visitors. However, there is also another group who have plans for this site. Hayfield Development Trust would like to create a site with housing, shops and business units. We may also get some form of building on this site, however, as the whole project has gone back to consultation, we could be up to five years away from a new headquarters. This leaves us in the position of having an inadequate building. We have nowhere to garage our vehicles and as the rooms are too small to hold team meetings, we have to rely on the generosity of the landlord of the George, to hold meetings and training in his pub! It looks like we will just have to wait and see how this develops. If you want to find out more about the proposals, you can get further info about Gateway to Kinder here(G2K Front Cover.pdf) and here (G2K Centre.pdf) and the Hayfield Development Trust plans here (Vision Statement) and here (Plans)

As the meeting progressed, I was struggling to find things to include in my diary, then Ken our chairman came to my rescue. It turns out that he had recently given a talk about the team to the Mellor Townswomen’s Guild. To quote Ken, he had “Gone down so well that that they didn’t want him to leave”, and sent him off with a large donation. Well done Ken – a true trooper!

Geoff finished us off with the usual bits and pieces of business and some extra details on the recent search across Kinder for the missing lady. With everything wrapped up, we took advantage of the fact that we have to hold our meetings in a pub, and made our way downstairs!