Well fourteen days into the New Year and this morning saw what we all thought would be our first full Team Call Out of the year.

At 09:39 this morning a Greater Manchester Police Missing Person Search Manager contacted our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE by mobilephone to request the team’s assistance in the developing search for a missing 73 year old man.

The man from the Westhoughton area of Bolton had left his home address yesterday afternoon, (Thursday 13th January) to go for one of his regular walks.
Not returning home as darkness fell, his wife reported him missing to Police.
By this morning a major Police search operation was gathering momentum, with the team being requested to assist.

The team was initially put on standby via our pagers at 09:54, as Police started to formulate a more detailed search operation.

With nine team members immediately available from noon onwards, to be joined by the rest of the membership as they could get out of work, the good news was received at 11:05 by our Team Leader in liaison with GMP, that family members of the missing man had located him safe and well walking back to his home address.

We understand he had apparently walked into a large nearby area of grassland and wooded parkland and became lost as night fell. He decided to take shelter under some trees and bushes, waking up this morning, realising his surroundings in the daylight and setting off back home.

An excellent ending, with the team being stood down by pager at 11:10.
A Mountain Rescue specialist Trail Dog Team (Handler Iain Nicholson and Search Dog Mij of Bowland Pennine MRT / SARDA Wales) had also been requested by our Team Leader to lend support to this search.

So we still await our first full team Call Out of 2011….