A quiet early morning, with no enquiries or advice calls from NWAS (Manchester) Control, but how long would it last !
A call at around 10.00hrs from our Team Leader Garry Rhodes to Team Leader Andy Simpson of Rossenedale and Pendle MRT to enquire if he had also had a quiet nights uninterrupted sleep was met with a firm ‘no’ from Andy, with their call then interrupted by Andys pager bleeping alerting RPMRT to a yet another call out, this time in Colne.
Perhaps tempting fate, after consulting with NWAS (Manchester) Control mid day that no MRTs were currently active in Greater Manchester or on call, our Team Leader paged out at 12.35hrs that there was no envisaged need to place our resources (at present) on standby.
The inevitable then happened, with our pagers going off at 12.52hrs to contact NWAS (Manchester) Control regards an incident on the Johnson Fold estate in Bolton.
At this stage the despatcher David at NWAS (Manchester) Control was now dealing with four separate MRT’s on four separate incidents in Greater Manchester ! After getting all the relevant information, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes made a full team pager call out at 13.03hrs.
One NWAS (Manchester) Emergency Ambulance was stuck in snow trying to reach a patient address, with the team required to extricate this and also possibly transport the patient to the second responding NWAS (Manchester) Emergency Ambulance.
Our Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon (who had responded in his vehicle) and Ged Clarke solo responding in BM2, with muscle power and snow shovels extricated the stuck Ambulance and also made sure the other Ambulance with the patient now on board, could safely leave the Johnson Fold housing estate.
Our BM3 vehicle with Fred Taylor and Chris Tennant on board was stood down responding nearby, with our BM1 vehicle stood down about to depart our LBH base, with Ken Oakes and Elaine Gilliland on board. This incident was concluded on scene at circa 13.32hrs.
Due to the way we have reported some incidents, although we have shown this as Incident 36 of 2010, in reality (yes it is confusing) it is the 61st separate incident we have attended in 2010.
Combined with the 45x separate incidents attended in 2009 since this wintry period started (for us) on the evening of December 19th 2009, we have now attended in total 106 separate incidents to date, all related to the prevailing wintry conditions.
