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Diary - september 2007

Monday 4th September 2007 19:30hrs – Casualty Care Training

This months training was on basic life support. We were split in to groups to practice various tasks. As we have the Casualty Care exam coming up soon, we need to be assessed on basic life support (CPR) and the use of the Defibrillator. We started with the CPR dummies, practicing chest compressions and rescue breaths.

We then went on to look at look at the gasses we use. We had a practice at connecting the various masks and a quick practice at delivering the gasses to each other. Some people seemed to enjoy this section more than others.

We moved on to have a look at the new medical kits and finally ran through the video on how to use the Defib machine. It was a long session and we were all happy when we were finally allowed out to the pub!

Wednesday 12th September 2007 19:30hrs – SARDA Training

Tonight’s training is about how we work along side our colleagues in the Search and Rescue Dogs Association (SARDA). SARDA members are all serving members of Mountain Rescue teams, who have gone on to train search dogs.

John Coombs from Edale team, who is one of the senior members of SARDA in the Peak District, has come over to give us a talk. He explains how it takes them years to train their dogs to work on airborne scent to locate casualties. They are able to tell the difference between the scent of a walker and of someone sat down. The handler searches an area by working the dog across the wind, hoping they will pick up a scent which they can then home in on. The dogs are trained to work away from the handler and once they find a casualty they come back to the handler and lead them to the find. Lassie has nothing on these dogs. You can find out more about SARDA at www.sardaengland.org.uk.

15th & 16th September 2007 – Hayfield Sheepdog Trials

The team has offered to help out at the Hayfield Sheepdog Trials. We were involved in the setup and helped with the entrance gates. We also ran a small stand explaining some of the thing we do.

It was a busy two days and while we were there we were also asked to provide assistance to a couple of people. The Mountain bike trails display team were carrying out some amazing jumps. Unfortunately, one of his amazing stunts resulted in him putting his shoulder out.

We were also asked to provide our Landrover to help a lady off the show ground. It was a busy weekend, but a good time was had by all.

Monday 17th September 2007 19:00hrs – Defibrillator Training

As the first stage of our Cas care qualification, we need to have an up to date Defibrillator assessment. Tonight involves an assessment of our CPR procedures using our Resusci-Annie dummy, followed by the Defib test.

We have obviously been trained well, as we all sailed through the assessments.

Sunday 23rd September 2007 08:40hrs – Exercise

Managing to get to today’s exercise had been a miracle of logistics and a large slice of luck. My wife was away playing netball for the weekend, leaving my in charge of the kids (at least I think it was that way round – they didn’t seem to see it that way). I had spent the weekend dropping off here and picking up there, but a last minute offer of a kids day out with the Grandparents saw me heading to the hut for an exercise I wasn’t expecting to make.

On arriving, a message on the board told us all that today’s scenario involved a father and son who had been shouting for help somewhere down Red Brook, a rocky gully at the top of Kinder Scout. A fast response party had already been dispatched and a second team was just setting out to follow them. I entered my name on to the deployment system and was soon allocated into Kinder 4. As the size of this party began to grow I realized that we were obviously going to be given the job of carrying up the heavy gear. Lofty appeared from the control room and gave us the bad news, we were taking the rope rescue gear up. I signed out a medical kit and attached it and a 100m rope to my rucksack. Those of you who have been following this diary will by now know that due to my ineptitude at packing, my rucksack is normally ridiculously heavy. Today it was pushing my sense of humor to its limit. Fortunately, just as were leaving, Ryan jumped in to the Landrover to join us. This meant an extra pair of hands to carry the gear.

The Landrover dropped us off at Moorgate and we started the trek up to Red Brook. Half way up we heard on the radio that the first team had found the casualties and asked for us to bring our rope rescue gear to the site. We made our way over to them and found Colin at the bottom of the stream bed. He asked me to go up to the Cas site to help out with casualty care, while Lofty was tasked with sorting out how we were going to get them out of the gully.

I headed up to the Cas site and saw Neale who already had his arm in a sling, courtesy of the first team. When I got closer I saw Vinny laid out in about the most awkward position he could find. This wasn’t going to be an early finish.

He had gone for realism with a heavy supply of fake blood and a generous amount of moaning and groaning. Dave had managed to make him safe, but he still needed his leg splinting and this wasn’t going to be easy, as he was perched over a surprisingly deep pool. Another team arrived at the bottom of the gully bringing us the vacuum splints. With a bit of careful balancing, his leg was placed in the splint and the air pumped out.

It was decided that the safest way to get the two casualties out of the gully would be to raise the up from the top. So while we looked after them in the gully, Lofty and Colin took the rest of the team to set up a belay at the top of the hill.

The team at the top hammered a series of aluminum stakes into the peat and set up the belay from them. Not long after, they sent three people down to us with a stretcher. It was steep slope and they had to be careful on the way down.

As Neale was only suffering from a damaged arm, he was able to be attached to the rope and along with Phil to help him, they were hauled up to the top. They left the stretcher with us while Neale was being recovered, so we were now in a position to extract Vinny from his awkward position. We used a body splint called a “Kendrik Extraction Device”. This wraps round the casualty and holds them in a fixed position while we maneuver them out. The main advantage of this splint today, is that it has handles, giving us something to pull him out with.

Vinny is not a small chap and it took six of us to lift him. With a bit of coordinated grunting and careful maneuvering we managed to get him out on to a flat area where we could load him into the full body vacuum mattress and on to the stretcher.

Once he was in the stretcher the ropes were lowered down again and the stretcher was attached ready for the haul up the hill. We maneuvered the stretcher over the bottom of the gully and got it in position to begin the raise.

Surprisingly it can be a lot easier to raise a stretcher on a vertical slope, as it can get caught up in the vegetation when it is on an angle. With a combination of hauling from the top and manhandling from the stretcher team, we managed to get him to the top, though I’m glad it wasn’t any further as I thought my lungs were going to explode.

As we reached the top, I could see the work that had gone in to getting us up here. The raising system involves using a pulley to help with the weight of a fully loaded stretcher, but the people who had been doing the pulling were looking as out of breath as I was.

Finally, as I helped to pack away the raising system, Vinny was carried off on the stretcher towards the Landrovers waiting back at Moorgate. It had been an excellent day and as the recent mild weather had made the last few months quite quiet it was good to get out again. It was noticeable how the weather had turned colder, so things may start to get busy again soon (my family will be so pleased!).

Finally, here is a video of the best of the day's events:

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Friday 28th September 2007 20:00hrs – Team Meeting

It’s monthly team meeting night and that means we must be voting on something. Tonight we are choosing two deputy team leaders and there are a few candidates to choose from. The magic ballot box goes round, we all do our bit and Neale and Nigel are duly elected into their new positions.

The rest of the meeting was fairly routine. One item of interest was a letter from the fell runner we helicoptered off the top of Kinder back in April. He had completed a sponsored run dressed as Scooby Doo to raise funds for us. We are very grateful for his efforts.

Following the team meeting we had our annual slide show of what team members had been up to in their spare (?) time. The prize for most effort expended and most beards grown had to go the SAGA gang who cycled from Lands End to John O’Groats (isn’t that up hill?).

 

Sunday 30th September 2007 17:10hrs – Callout

A quiet Sunday afternoon and I have just finished cutting the grass. Now I’m not the superstitious sort, but I don’t like the idea of getting a callout when I’m near the end of a job. If for any reason I didn’t make it back, there would always be that corner of the garden as it was when I left it. So I was relieved to be packing away when a text message landed on my phone saying “Callout – RV Hut”. I ran into the house and started to get my gear together. “Great!” said my wife, as she began packing away the meal she had just started cooking. My daughter enthusiastically started to make me a sandwich. I smiled nicely as I left the house, not only had I ruined my wife’s cooking, but she had agreed to look after Vinny’s kids while he was on the callout.

When I arrived at the hut, the information we were given was that a Nigerian man in a grey tracksuit was missing on the top of Kinder. He had got split up from his walking group somewhere near Kinder Low. The leader of his walking group was up there looking for him and Darren had sent a team up to speak to him and get more information. After a bit of waiting around while a search plan was put together, I was tasked to search the Three Knowles path up to the plateau with Charlie, Alison and Steve. Other teams were dispatched to search the main escape routes, tracking his known route back to Kinder Low.

We were dropped off Moorgate, below Kinder Low and made our way up the path. As we were walking up we heard a message from Colin, who was now with the group leader. He told us the man had gone ahead of the main group and had got separated. A potential sighting from another walker placed him as heading across the plateau to Fairbrook Naize. This is some of the worst terrain in the area….it was not looking good.

The light was starting to fade as we carried on searching the path. Suddenly we got a call on the radio….”All teams return to base”. The man had turned up at the bottom of the hill. We made our way back down to the road, where Bernie was waiting for us with transport. I had to say, having such a well dressed driver definatly improved the transport experience!

Back at base, both the group leader and the missing walker were being interviewed by Darren to complete the police paperwork. It turned out that the man was actually a Libyan student, though he was wearing a grey tracksuit. He was very fit and had decided to go on ahead of the rest of the group. They had asked him to wait for them at the top, but he had decided to carry on and lost contact with them. It was a well intentioned call from the group leader and a much better result than us having to spend the night searching through the peat groughs on the top of Kinder.

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