This evening the team was on a pre-arranged Christmas standby for NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) with duty crews present enabling all four of our Landrover Mountain Rescue ambulances to be availble.

At 21:18 the team was contacted by NWAS PEC regards responding to the report of a youth who had fallen from height in the Churchgate area of Bolton.

15 team members and our four Landrover ambulances were able to make an immediate response from our Ladybridge Hall base arriving at the first RVP of Brown Street, Bolton Town Centre, at 21:30, to meet police officers already at that location who presented further information that the male youth involved appeared to be in the culverted (tunnel) section of the River Croal and we were redirected to the opposite end of the tunnel where responding GMFRS resources were deploying into the tunnel.

At 21:37 the 15 team members arrived together at the second rendezvous point in the vicinty of the Trinity Retail Park, just as members of the GMFRS water rescue unit (Eccles fire station) brought out from the culverted section of the river the youth involved.

The youth was completely wet from his ordeal in the culvert and was suffering from hypothermia and shock.

The team’s subsequent minor role in this incident was to provide our specialist casualty bags (lightweight and full weight) to assist in the rewarming of the casualty who was quickly placed in a responding NWAS ambulance, and thence taken to Royal Bolton Hospital.

It is understood that the youth involved had been at a youth disco in the Town Centre during the night and was then involved in a matter with the police, and had apparently jumped from a bridge into the shallow River Croal and then into the culverted section in an attempt to evade the police.

Multiple resources responded to this incident including an NWAS emergency ambulance, an NWAS operational duty manager, multiple divisional police resources, resources from Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service including fire appliances from Bolton Central and the Water Rescue Unit from Eccles; a duty GMFRS commander and our own team.

At one stage the Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit was also overhead in an attempt to fix the exact location of the youth.