At 16:24 Hrs today Greater Manchester Police, paged the Team for immediate assistance with a search for a missing 60 year old male, in the Bow Green, Bowdon area of South Manchester. A Full Team call out took place at 16.54 Hrs, also requesting our kayak search team, for searching the River Bollin.

The gentleman had been missing a number of hours, which combined with darkness and dense freezing fog, made the search even more urgent. The weather, hampered most of our team members response, with a large part of Greater Manchester motorway system gridlocked, resulting in an usual journey of 40 mins to the scene RVP turning into a nightmare 2 hour stop go crawl, none the less members started arriving for deployment.

Search Dog Chi and trainee search dog Sniff, both belonging to team member and dog handler Dave Marsh were dispatched very quickly after their arrival, followed by other search parties.

Then at 20:25 Hrs, the good news was relayed by GMP that the missing gentleman had been found in Altrincham town centre, approx 2 miles away, safe and well, despite the freezing conditions prevailing. Thanks were received, for our efforts from GMP and the missing gentlemans family, who had been at search control during the evening,.

So we did the usual things we had to do on scene at the conclusion of a search, with lots of kit to pack away back into our Control Trailer and returned back to our homes or in some members cases back to the vehicle bases to pack away and prepare our vehicles for the next incident. This incident was concluded at 22.45 Hrs, 15 Team members were involved directly, together with our SARDA Search dog Team, 7 others were stood down responding, also involved were GMP Tatical Aid Unit, Divisional resources, a Traffic unit, Dog Unit & Search Managers.

Mention (with thanks) should be made of the many local people who offered their help in the search.