At 15:30 this afternoon, during a period of freezing rain affecting many parts of Greater Manchester, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE received a direct call from NWAS (Manchester) who were very busy with a high emergency call volume.

The team was requested to attend a property in the Astley Bridge area of Bolton, where a woman had slipped injuring her leg.

At 15:35 a team pager message requested the attendance of one team vehicle, which would also be required to transport the woman to hospital.

Our BM1 Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance responded with three team members on board, but en-route was redirected to another potentially more serious emergency, so our BM3 vehicle with two members on board responded in place.

The second emergency call was then cancelled via NWAS (The 999 caller stated to NWAS that they no longer required an Ambulance!) and so both vehicles attended the original call, supported by our Team Leader, and team member Neil Warburton, who noticed our responding vehicles whilst he was out on business near to the incident.

Arriving at the property at 16:09, our responding members discovered a 69 year old woman had slipped on ice glazed patio tiling at her home address, sustaining a serious lower leg fracture.

Her leg injury was splinted, and pain killing gas was administered, she was then placed on a mountain rescue stretcher and carried the short distance to our BM3 vehicle, which departed at 16:57 for Royal Bolton Hospital.

Our second responding vehicle, BM1 transported the injured woman’s husband to hospital.

At the time of this incident, the patio, driveway and road surface around this property were all ice glazed, making walking very difficult without slipping. (And carrying a stretcher with a casualty on it is a very careful proposition indeed)