Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Diary

Monday 3rd October

It's defib training tonight as we're all due to take our annual defib assessment in the next couple of months. Neil's been delegated by Mike to take this session. We start off going through the basic life support and then move on to the defib specific training. This mainly involves watching a video of a series of people collapsing with heart attacks and having the defib applied to them. The video production company must have been paid by the segment as there are 14 (or was it 15?) in all. It's a bit like Groundhog Day, as many of the segments are almost the same. Many of the 'old lags' who've seen the video before wait with eager anticipation for segment 11. In a family diary it's not possible to give more details, except to say that it's important to get the defib pads on bare skin, regardless of the sex of the casualty!

We're given a crib sheet and the assessment sheet - all we need to do know is wait for assessment day.

Wednesday 12th October

Tonight's topic is casualty site management. It's back to the good old days, as Geoff turns his back on modern technology and goes for the interactive blackboard approach. We go through the single casualty scenario - two cas carers with the casualty, the hill party leader becoming the site officer in charge of the whole casualty site and the radio operator, then more of the team arriving, allowing equipments officer, long and short navigators (scale of navigation, rather than height in feet and inches) etc. to be allocated.

We then move on to the multi-casualty scenario. Typical scenarios might be an incident on Kinder where part of a group goes off to get help and they themselves get injured, a traffic accident on the main road through the village with vehicles leaving the road and tumbling down the hillside or a light plane crash. Whilst these are rare events, we need to practice so that we know what to do if one does occur. Look at New Orleans to realise why practising for rare events is important.

We go through triage - quickly assessing all the casualties and placing them in order of priority before starting treatment. There's no point in treating someone's broken wrist if there's someone bleeding to death further along. As well as casualty care, we go through the pros and cons of various evacuation scenarios.

Geoff manfully fields a series of increasingly complex scenario questions, mainly, it seems, revolving around how we might set up a system that allows us to use every single channel on our radio in one glorious radio net.

ATTTP.

Saturday 15th October

It's Ceilidh night (look Mike, I can spell it if I really try!). Mike confesses that he eventually twigged that my various emails to him, subjects K Lee, Kay Leigh etc. were a feeble attempt at humour on my part, rather than a feeble attempt at spelling! I've persuaded my Mum and Dad that, as it's both their birthdays this weekend, what they really want to do is go to a Mountain Rescue Ceilidh. Dad, at 79, insists that he won't be doing any dancing, what with the gamy leg and all. However, it turns out that he's no match for Olive and I look up from one tricky Celidh manouvre to see him gliding across the dance floor.

The MadCap Ceilidh Band get us all up and dancing, and suddenly the hall's gone from nippy to baking. We run through two or three dances and then, to the band's consternation, the team unilaterally decide that it's time for the buffet. The band can see that they're beaten and are soon in the buffet queue themselves.

Post buffet there's more dancing. A bit confusingly for a Ceilidh, we seem to do a dance from Todmorden and then something written by some bloke from Sheffield? Not to mention the caller wearing a kilt, but speaking with an accent 'from these parts' rather than from the 'north of the border parts'. Luckily, our Mountain Rescue skills are significantly better than our Ceilidh skills.

After everyone collapses at the end of the evening, the band finish off with an excellent performance piece and we all disppear off home.

Another triumph for Darts and Doms Mike - it's not clicked that the way to get rid of the social secretary job is not to organised a series of A1 social events, where everyone says well done, great event, carry on!

In the interests of taste and decency, and to protect the innocent, no photographs are available for this event!

Sunday 23rd October

Today's exercise is a multi-casualty incident, started by callout. This means that we use the standard callout procedure, rather than all arriving at the hut at a pre-determined start time. Living only a mile from the base, I'm one of the first to arrive. I begin to suspect that this might not be a good move - arriving first at a multi-casualty site could lead to a challenging day ahead. After a few minutes, I go with Darren, Phil and Ian. Things go from bad to worse for me as I find myself Casualty Carer of the party.

The scenario is that a walker has spotted a microlight coming down on the Glossop side of Kinder. I'm wondering how we're going to get a multi-casualty incident out of this. We're the second hill party to leave and get a lift from John over to Moorfield. We get part way up the track up the moor in the Landrover before being thwarted by a locked gate. We walk to the top of the track before setting off across the moor towards Mill Hill.

After about 30 minutes whistling and walking we hear a single whistle blast, which must be from the casualty. It takes us another 10-15 minutes to actually get to the site. As I get nearer, I'm accosted by a wild man gabbling away about a microlight landing on his friends whilst they were walking - I nominate Bernie for an Oscar for his performance. Nigel suppresses a smile as I try to deal with Bernie and take in the four casualties moaning and groaning on the ground. The rest of my hill party arrive and thankfully Phil takes Bernie off out of the way. Ian and Ian and I perform triage on the four casualties. Apparently, they were were walking along enjoying the peace and quiet of the countryside when four of them were taken out by the microlight performing an emergency landing. How unlucky is that?

We assign a number to each casualty and do an initial assessment, putting them in priority order. We have one spinal injury, one broken ribs, one gashed leg and one broken arm. Only a few minutes later, a second hill party arrive and we have enough casualty carers for one for each casualty:

There's a bit of a flap as other hill parties arrive and go on to try and find the pilot,who has disappeared towards Glossop to find help. Meanwhile, Darren has become the Site Officer and is busy trying to organise helicopters, supply of kit and generally sort out the safe evacuation of all of the casualties. We're going to use helicopters for most of the evacuation. There's a flurry of excitement as a rumour goes round about using a real helicopter. Sadly, we're all disappointed to find that we're using a 'paper' helicopter. This takes the microlight pilot, who's been found further down the path with serious head injuries, and three of the walking party down to the valley.

Sadly, and perhaps inevitably, the helicopter is unavailable for the final casualty. This means the usual end to an exercise, which is:

Would you trust this crew to carry you down??

We wind up with a debrief back in the hut and retire to the pub.

Friday 28th October

A quick team meeting tonight, as again we don't have any callouts to discuss. We've had some significant income this month - Ken's as the Royal Hotel in Hayfield receiving a cheque from the May Queen Committee and we've also received a cheque from the wife of a recent casualty. She kindly organised a fundraising event for us and raised a considerable sum of money.

The other main item of news is that we've managed to buy some extra radios, so we now have enough for one each. This will make life a bit simpler at the start of callouts, especially when we're at a remote RV.

It turns out that tonight is John's last night. He's moving down to the south west. Apparently, John's been watching the Holiday Rescue programme on TV and obviously believes that if he joins a rescue service down there he'll be out three or four times a week doing helicopter rescues. Or is it the Baywatch connection ...?

ATTTP

Monday 31st October

It's 21:15 and I hear a strange buzzing noise in the house. After a while I realise that it's my phone and that we have a callout. Although it's been ages since our last call, I'm into autopilot - kettle on, change, make flask, ring Geoff to check if the landrover needs picking up and jump into the car. I'm expecting a night search of Kinder, but before I can turn the ignition, my phone goes off again - stand-down, after only 7 minutes. Oh well, back inside, a mug of tea from the flask and back to the ironing. What an anticlimax.