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Diary

Monday 4th September 2006 19:00hrs – Casualty Care Training

I’m back from Holiday and tonight is a training session on CPR and how to use the Defibrilator. This is generally made up of a short demonstration of the equipment, followed by a long video on how to use it.

Neale, our Training officer, had asked me to transfer this video on to DVD. So this ment that the evening started with me carrying out some technical jigery-pokery to get it to play on a laptop. We all settled down and watched the Defib training.

Thirty minutes later after we had watched every concievable scenario of people being defibralated, the laptop interviened and decided to pack up before we all got too bored! And they say technology isn’t useful.

Later in the pub, as we are about to leave, a stray bat decides to join us, flying in through the front door. With the terrified bat flying around the inside of the pub, Chrissie decides that this would be an excellent time to visit the toilet. Meanwhile I sit back and watch Geoff carry out a text book rescue of a bat. If you have never seen this text book, I can tell you that it describes how to run around a pub chasing a bat with your waterproof, while the bat legs it out of the first available window. What it lacks in elegance, it makes up for in bravery.

Sunday 10th September 2006 08:45hrs – Exercise

This month’s exercise was down in the calendar as “Other Areas” so it was with great anticipation that I waited for the call on Sunday morning. My sack was packed for all possibilities – we could be spending hours on top of a cold windy mountain, somewhere in the back of beyond. But when my phone went off as I was half way through breakfast, I was surprised to see the message “Exercise Callout, RV Lyme Park Car Park – Geoff”. OK – not really what I was expecting, but hey, the sun was shining, could be a good day! I checked in to see if any of the Landrovers needed collecting and headed out to Lyme Park.

I arrived fairly early as I don’t live too far from the park. A few team members had made it there before me and we were soon joined by both Landrovers. A control point was set up and we made ourselves comfortable while Geoff, Chrissie and Darren drew up a search plan.

The party leaders were summoned to control and briefed on the scenario. A middle aged man had been missing over night. He was thought to have been on a walk in the park, but had not returned that night. We had a name and a photo, but not much else. The park had been divided up into search areas and we were sent off in four teams to clear them.

After a few hours searching (which included the gully we recovered a man with a broken ankle from recently), we had cleared all the main paths in the section and headed back to control. We were about to be re-tasked to another area when we received further information from the “Paper Police”. This is part of the scenario where information normally comes in as the Police question relatives etc and relay their findings to us as the search progresses. We were told that it was understood that he had been keen on photographing a Badger set. Chrissie contacted the Park wardens and found out that there were two major sets in the park. We teamed up with Pete’s party and were sent to search the area of one of the sets.

Our area was around a quarry near the top of the park. We made our way up to the top, lined out and swept passed the quarry. No luck. We turned round and swept back up the hill again.

 

As we headed back up the hill we noticed some movement near an outcrop at the top. We swept up towards it and finally found him. Andrea carried out Casualty Care and Neal went to assist.

As they were assessing him, his condition deteriorated and he dropped unconscious.

They diagnosed a diabetic coma, but luckily before they offered any treatment, they checked his belongings. They found a tube of pills marked up with a drug name they didn’t recognise (in real life they were Smarties!). We radioed back to control to find out what they were and after checking with a Doctor, we were advised that they could be fatal if taken with Coffee, Chocolate, Alcohol or Bovril! They treated him with Hypostop (a sugar solution) and promptly ate all the Smarties!

It was decided that the best way off would be to stretcher him to the road at Bowstones, so a request was sent for the other parties to bring the stretcher up to us. We settled in to wait for them.

Pete finally remembered that his role of Site officer comes with the addition of a shiny green vest.

After a short wait in the sun, second party appeared at the bottom of the hill. They made their way up to us and deposited the heavy gear. I noticed that they let Ryan, our newest probationer carry half of the stretcher. He obviously needs lessons in how to look busy when they are asking for volunteers! Let’s hope we get another new probationer soon – for his sake.

We loaded up the casualty onto the stretcher and set off. Pete cleverly asked myself and Dave to carry either end of the stretcher, which due the fact that we live our lives at the opposite ends of the height chart, meant that the stretcher would be horizontal as we went up hill.

Unfortunately, as most of the journey turned out to be down hill, we looked more like a drag racer. We slowly made our way over some very rough ground until finally we hit the path.

Just as we thought we were back to the road, we were presented with a final obstacle. As the park holds several herds of deer, all the gates are above head height. We managed to manhandle the now slightly worried casualty over the gate and on to the waiting vehicles.

Finally he was loaded up and driven back to Control. As it was such a nice day, we decided not to bother with a lift and made our way back to Control on foot.

Wednesday 13th September 2006 19:30 hrs – Training

Tonight’s training session was an exercise on the hill. The idea was to get some training in the dark before winter set in. As we arrived we were briefed on the scenario by Chrissie. There had been an accident between a Mountain Biker and a walker up near a Shooting Cabin on Kinder. A fast response party was sent up with Steve in charge. I was tasked with driving a Landrover again, so as they as they made their way to the location, I took the rest of the team to the filter house to wait for further instructions. Radio Comms were poor this evening and we had to move one of the vehicles to the top of the dam wall to get a better signal. Even then we were barely hearing the Cas site. Eventually the request for the extra equipment came in and Colin took the rest of the team up to the Cas Site. I noticed that everyone took advantage of Ryan’s enthusiasm and kindly let him carry half the stretcher up the hill again. That’s twice in a week, I’m sure he’ll figure out how to avoid it soon.

By now it was 8:15pm and it would be a few hours before the team got back down again. This was one of those nights where I couldn’t be late back, so Howard kindly agreed to stay in the Landrover on his own and I arranged a lift back to the Hut.

Let’s hope it didn’t turn out to be an epic!

Saturday 16th September 2006 10:30hrs – Equipment Trials

This morning I have been asked to help out with the trials of some new stretcher raising equipment. Our standard procedure, when needed, is to lower a stretcher or rescuer to the casualty and then to lower them down to the ground from there. This new equipment will also allow us to raise the stretcher, where lowering is not possible. More importantly, with this equipment, it is now possible to lower the stretcher, lock it off, change over to the raising equipment and bring it back up again on the same rope.

We loaded up the gear from the hut and took it up to a disused quarry.

A belay was set up with the standard lowering package. Here Bernie is setting up the Big Knott, to which the lowering packages are connected.

Once the standard lowering system was set up, Dave kindly volunteered to be lowered in a first test.

After attaching pullies to create a “block and tackle” system, Dave is then easily pulled up to the top. This worked very well, so we then swapped back to the lowering gear and tried it with Dave and the stretcher. This time, once he was lowered to the bottom, Bernie was strapped in as our “Casualty” and we got ready to haul them both up.

Here is the raising gear attached to the main line.

Raising two people and the stretcher took a lot more effort and Dave had a few problems manoeuvring it from his position at the bottom of the stretcher, but we soon had it back up to the top.

The system generally seemed to work well and we managed to switch over from lowering to raising without too much difficulty or extra heavy equipment.

Thursday 21st September 2006 03:15hrs – Callout

It’s Thursday morning and my alarm clock goes off to get me up for work. No matter how many times I press the button, it just doesn’t seem to want to stop ringing. It’s like one of those bad dreams, where no matter how much you run, you can’t quite get away from someone. Things slowly start to make more sense. I remember my name and where I live. It’s all becoming clear, it isn’t morning, it’s the middle of the night, and that annoying noise isn’t my alarm clock, it’s my phone. I stumble out of bed and try to make my way across the room in the dark. My children have clearly planned ahead for just such an event, carefully placing their toys in strategic locations to create a night time Fisher price assault course for me. I finally make it to my phone hopping on my least painful foot and cursing under my breath, so as not to wake up my wife.

Why is it that when I am waiting for a call at work, I can barely hear it ringing, yet when it’s 3:15 in the morning, the beeps that go along with ten attempts at trying to unlock my phone sound like they will wake up the whole house. Finally I come round enough to work the phone and get to the message. “Standby for first light” – Thanks! I guess that means we are due to start a search for someone once there is enough light. I go back to bed and spend the next half hour thinking about all the things I need to organise at work if I am not going in. Eventually I give up and go and watch the baseball (The Detroit Tigers won 6-2). Finally I manage to get back to sleep. It feels like the second I got to sleep my phone started to ring again (though it was probably about an hour and a half). This time the message said “Callout” and to meet at Crowden Youth hostel.

I then proceeded to stuff some breakfast down and write an e-mail to work explaining all the things that I was planning to do today, which now needed to be done by someone else. Finally I threw my things in the car and headed off.

Just as I was about to get there, I received another message saying that no more people were needed. As I was almost there I decided I may as well continue. When I arrived I met up with Chrissie, Neil and Search Dog Bryn (his handler, Steve, was now with one of the other teams).

Chrissie informed me that a vulnerable man had gone missing yesterday and his car had been found in Crowden Car Park. The SARDA search dog teams had been out through the night, as they are not as dependant on light as we are. As they were planning to deploy the rest of the teams, one of the search dogs found him.

A team had gone up with a stretcher and they had managed to get him in to one of the Landrovers. He was now on his way back to the waiting Ambulance.

Shortly after everyone arrived back and the casualty was taken off to hospital. I headed back home to get changed and go to work. I guess I would have do all those jobs at work myself after all.

Thursday 21st September 2006 11:15hrs – Callout

It’s late on Thursday night. Even though it has been a long day (we were woken up for a callout at 3am this morning), I decided I would get my diary entry out of the way, then at least I would be up to date. I was about to get in bed, when my phone went off. “Callout, RV Hut”. As I my gear was still in the car from this morning (I hadn’t even opened the Flask I made), I quickly got changed and set off. When I was half way there I realised I had forgotten my camera, so not photos from me today.

I arrived at the hut to a busy scene. One of the Landrovers was going out with a team in it. Other people were getting their boots on and making flasks of coffee. Geoff was carrying out his other role of Lead Controller tonight. This is the person who co-ordinates the incident, especially where multiple teams are involved. As Darren and Chrissie where both unavailable, Nigel was in charge of running the Kinder parties. He gave us a quick brief of where they were up to. Apparently a group of walkers, taking part in a charity event, had set off from Holmfirth that morning, headed for Snake Pass summit. It was thought that they had walked as far as Torside Car Park, where most of them had decided to take their minibus to Snake Summit. One of the parties decided to finish the route and left Torside at about 5:30pm heading over Bleaklow. The others agreed to meet him at the other side. By 10:30 he still hadn’t showed up, so they called the police for help.

Geoff had called out ourselves, Glossop team, three teams of SARDA search dogs and later on he would involve the Woodhead, Edale and Oldham teams. This would be a major search.

Three Kinder teams had already been deployed, one was working along the Pennine Way, and the other two were clearing the two main routes up Doctor’s Gate, one of the most obvious escape routes as you can see the lights of Glossop from the top, so people often head towards them.

I was put in a search party with Neal as our party leader. We were doubled up into one big team of eight to allow us to cover our area quicker. We had quite a wait for the Landrover to return after dropping off the first teams. Finally it arrived and we were sent to work our way down the top section of the Doctor’s Gate path. We cleared this section and soon met up with another two teams who had cleared the lower parts of this track.

We were quickly re-tasked to search the Upper North Grain through to Grains in the Water. There was a strong possibility that he could be somewhere along here, as Grains in the Water is a common place to find missing walkers on Bleaklow. We headed up Upper North Grain, our torches lighting up the opposite side of the gully as we searched. After about a kilometre, we noticed what looked like a bivy shelter in the gully below the path. There were no responses to our shouts, so Phil decided to go down and take a closer look. When he got there and lifted up the shelter, it turned out to be covering a rain gauge! We carried on shouting his name and searching as we moved further up. When we reached the top of the clough we split in to two teams of four. Lofty took one team up to Hern Clough and Neal, Phil, Anthony and myself went on to Grains in The Water. I had been given the job of navigating, but at this stage as we moved out of the clough and on to the featureless moor, I decided to cheat a bit and switched to my GPS to give an accurate bearing to Grains. While being able to navigate with a map and compass is obviously necessary, when it gets to 3am in the pitch dark, I decided it was more important to work quickly and be able to give our exact location whenever needed.

As we came over the top and into Grains, we could see several other teams searching around us. Lofty’s team had reached Hern Clough to our left we could see some of the Glossop teams on the other side.

We could hear other teams shouting the man’s name, but we could also hear a faint shout of what sounded like “Hello”. We radioed our position to check if any other teams were due north of us. As we were doing this a team from Glossop also began to hear him on the side of the Grain they were searching. They lined out and swept across the hill. Eventually, at 5am, they found him almost two kilometres from his intended route.

Here is my GPS track which shows our search route and the location of the casualty.

The gentleman had injured his ankle, but more worryingly was overdue medication for a heart complaint. We were all then tasked with making our way to the Casualty Site in preparation for a long stretcher carry to get him down to the road. Because of his condition, the length of time he had been out and how long it would take us to carry him down, a helicopter was requested.

At 6am an RAF Sea King appeared out of the dark. It had it’s full lights on and was a lot like a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.

It landed close to the casualty site and he was loaded up to be flown to hospital. As the sun started to rise we trudged our way back to the road to get a lift back to base. It had been a long night, but ended with a good result. When we returned to base it appeared that those running the incident had had a long tiring night as well.

The incident was wrapped up at 8am, just in time to go home, get changed and head in to work!