In the summer of 2009, Robert (Bob) Atkins, the Director of Radcliffe based PARAT UK Limited, very kindly donated completely free to the team a substantial amount of equipment.
This very supportive and thoughtful donation included 40x brand new hand search torches, over two hundred chemical light sticks, two heavy duty custom made equipment cases, two portable searchlight units complete with magnetic mounting cradles and a hand held powerful long range beam rechargeable searchlight unit.
On Friday 22nd July 2011, Bob again kindly contacted the team with the great news that he had some further chemical light sticks to donate to us. (Which came co-incidentally at just about the same time that his previous donation of light sticks had been used up on team operations and training exercises)
This afternoon our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, and team members David Crawford and Paul Copley journeyed in one of our brand new Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance vehicles to the Europa Trading Estate, Radcliffe, premises of PARAT UK Limited, to meet up with Bob Atkins and kindly accept his wonderful donation.
For our Team Leader it was a chance to meet Bob face to face and to directly thank him for his previous support.
It turns out Bob is a regular mountain biker on the local moors (And in the course of such a few years ago he had sustained a very serious injury mountain biking on the moors above Rochdale) and his support of our team had come about through his local mountain biking.
Bob through his company then kindly handed over to an astonished Garry, David and Paul, a very substantial large donation of chemical light sticks, numbering 110x 15″ long length sticks, over 3,700x 6″ ’standard’ sticks, 240x 4″ sticks, and over 3,200x mini 1″ sticks. In addition Bob also kindly donated 90x Light stick shielded holders.
The light sticks included yellow, red, green, blue, white, orange and infra red visible types, of different light duration times.
Garry, David and Paul then gratefully thanked Bob on behalf of all Bolton MRT team members for his very kind donation to the team, promising we would share out anything not required for our own team from this very supportive and thoughtful donation, with our fellow Mountain Rescue Teams.
Back at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ, Garry, Paul and David, now joined by our Training Officer Elaine Gilliland and Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon, then unloaded the donation from our Land Rover and started working out who would get what and where it would go.
Through this donation, each of our forty nine operational Call Out list members has now been equipped with a comprehensive set of different types and colours of light sticks.
We have also made up a comprehensive light stick ’set’ for each of our five vehicles and kept back some for a ’spares use’ holding stock.
In use with the team, we use light sticks such as these for personal lighting, identifying individuals, as markers for ’kit dumps,’ to mark out routes for following parties in for example dense woodland, to mark out cordon areas (such as ’Danger areas,’ or sadly potential ’crime scenes’ / body locations) and to indicate team members to air assets at night, amongst many other uses.
We have also made up from the overall kind donation, large donations of light sticks in turn to our colleagues in Bowland and Pennine Mountain Rescue Team, Oldham Mountain Rescue Team and Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team. (Their Team Leaders all being very appreciative of the support given by Bob Atkins of PARAT UK Limited and the donation of light sticks via our team to their respective teams)
The whole Bolton Mountain Rescue Team membership extends its fullest and very sincere thanks to Bob Atkins of PARAT UK Limited, Europa Trading Estate, Radcliffe, Manchester, for his very kind and much appreciated valued continuing support of the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team.
See also website ’news’ article dated Wednesday 29th July 2009.
