Today we can announce that long serving Team Call Out list member and Team Call Out Contact member Dave Healey has decided to leave the team.
Dave has given the team nearly 13x years of faithful service, over two separate periods in the team.
During his time with the team Dave has served on a number of Team Council positions within the Team Committee, including our Secretary, a short (interim) spell as our Treasurer and for the last seven years as our Equipment Officer (Communications and Lighting equipment).
He has also served for a number of years as one of the small number of Call Out Contacts in the team, who have the role of initially liaising with call out requests upon the teams services from the Ambulance / Fire / Police Control Rooms and initiating an appropriate team response to such requests.
Dave was well known within the wider Mountain Rescue community particularly within the specialist field of communications and IT applications, and has helped and advised within our regional body the MPSRO (Mid Pennine Search and Mountain Rescue Organisation) and offered communications advice to colleague teams such as Cheshire LSART.
Within the team Dave has contributed massively to the vast improvement of our radio equipment and latterly our IT based mapping systems.
Dave has always played a big role in the administration of the team, helping and assisting our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE on many occasions, often till quite late into the evening and early morning hours.
Dave also managed our Pager Call Out system, and over many years struck up an excellent working relationship with Vodapage, our pager provider, negotiating many improvements to our service.
On team operational incidents Dave was always to be found helping with the vitally important ’logging and administration tasks,’ often overlooked but forming an essential part of any operation, and on searches he acted as one of the teams Search Managers.
In October 2009, (albeit a little late in its granting) Dave’s service to mountain rescue in general was recognised by our Regional body the MPSRO, in the awarding of a 10 years Long Service to Mountain Rescue Certificate.
Over the years Dave has freely donated a huge amount of his time and personal effort to the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team, a fact that is recognised by his many close friends and colleagues in the team and other allied organisations.
Dave has also donated many items of equipment to the Bolton MRT over the years, particularly IT and communications equipment, ranging from leads and cabling, to vehicle mobilephone items and radios, for which the team is very grateful.
The whole team membership wishes Dave well in his retirement from the team, and the promise now of sleepy nights to come for him and his partner Carol free from the disturbance of late night pager calls announcing yet another call out.
All the best Dave and thanks for your major contribution to the development of Bolton Mountain Rescue Team over your thirteen years of service.
