At 18.36hrs this evening we were paged by NWAS (Manchester) EOC Parkway requesting the team’s assistance.

The call was answered by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, who was informed a woman who had fallen was being tended by a NWAS crew on scene, but they needed help in getting her to their nearby Ambulance.

A full team pager call out was made at 18.45hrs by which time members were ready to respond in the two Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances mobilised to this incident.

This evening was the night of our Annual Team Dinner, with the response being made up partly of team members who were not attending the dinner.

During our response, Rossendale and Pendle MRT were paged directly by us for their assistance should we require additional personnel on scene. (Their Call Out Officers liaising with our Team Leader and Mike Marsh, one of our ‘Call Out Contacts’)

The incident location was land immediately off Hinds Lane, Lower Hinds, Bury.

At 19.02hrs our first team member Phil Crook arrived on scene to liaise with the NWAS crew on scene, followed at 19.05hrs by John Dickinson, with our Land Rover BM3 arriving on scene at 19.12hrs and BM2 at 19.18hrs.

The 23 year old woman involved, from a local residence, had fallen whilst out walking with a companion, incurring a suspected lower leg fracture.

At 19.18hrs we paged Rossendale and Pendle MRT to stand down their response as being no longer required, given we had sufficient personnel on scene to deal with this incident.

The NWAS crew from Heywood Ambulance Station, splinted her leg injury and offered pain killing gas to the casualty, who was then placed on to our SAR Alpine Lite MR specialist stretcher, for the short distance yet awkward carry to the nearby NWAS Emergency Ambulance.

By 19.38hrs the incident was complete on scene, with the woman involved on her way to hospital.

In total we had nine team members on scene, one other assisting with liaison tasking’s, a further team member stood down on scene, and three team members stood down responding.

For on scene team member Ged Clarke (accompanied by his wife Penny) it was then straight on to the Team Dinner, along with Steve O’Hara and Steve Fletcher – who all changed back in to their smart clothes / suits for the Team Dinner…… guess which Team Leader went straight to the Team Dinner dressed in his team kit?