At 17:59 this evening, the team was paged by NWAS Lancashire Emergency Control centre who were requesting our assistance at an incident in Adlington, near Chorley.
With one team member still at the team base from the earlier fell race, and several others having only just left, the team was able to make a very quick response to this call.
The team was requested to assist an NWAS Lancashire ambulance crew and RRV who were at the scene of an incident on the Leeds to Liverpool canal, Adlington.
A 52 year old female, who was a resident on one of the canal narrowboats, had suffered a suspected serious stroke and the NWAS staff had requested Mountain Rescue assistance in order to carry the patient a few hundred metres down the canal towpath to the waiting ambulance at Allanson Hall Farm, situated just off the A6.
Team members load the casualty onto the Bell Mountain Rescue stretcher
Coincidentally, the NWAS Ambulance crew who requested us were the same crew that we had worked with earlier in the day at Sunnyhurst Wood in Darwen on incident 70/2011.
The first team members arrived at the RV point at 18:25, with the first responding team vehicle arriving at 18:28. Equipment from the vehicle, including evacuation and scene lighting equipment, was immediately sent up the towpath to the narrowboat. Team members then worked with the NWAS staff and members of the public in the rather tricky extraction of the patient from the narrowboat, and then placed her onto one of the team’s Bell Mountain Rescue stretchers.
The casualty was then carried by the team approximately 320m down the towpath back to Allanson Hall Farm, where she was then transferred to the NWAS Ambulance which quickly departed for the Royal Preston Hospital.
The incident RVP at Allanson Hall Farm, Adlington
The following resources were used in this incident:
- NWAS Lancashire Emergency Control Centre
- NWAS Emergency Ambulance with two crew on board
- NWAS Rapid Response Vehicle with one crew member
- Bolton MRT, one team vehicle and a total of 18 personnel involved and a further three team members stood down responding.
This incident marks the first operational use of our recently purchased PELI RALS 9440 scene lighting equipment, which proved very useful this evening in turning the dark canal towpath into near daylight!
The team would like to thank the members of the public, including some local residents, who helped by giving directions to the responding team members and NWAS crews.