At 02.23hrs in the early hours of this morning, we were paged by NWAS (Lancashire) to assist with the report of an injured male, on the shoreline of Lower Rivington Reservoir.
Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE answered the call, and liaised with Ambulance Control, making use of his extensive local area knowledge to try to determine better the man’s location.
A full team pager call out was then made at 02.46hrs.
By 02.53hrs in liaison with NWAS Control, team member Steve Fletcher was in mobile phone contact with the confused and possibly injured man, and utilising SARLOC, an IT application for mountain rescue to determine the location of a person by mobile phone tracking (Which does require the compliance of the casualty) an accurate location for the man was determined.
At 03.04hrs our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE and team member Gill Leigh, arrived at Knowle House Car Park, Lever Park, and using the gate access keys we have, gained access on to Lever Parks extensive track and bridleway network, and drove to the ruins of Liverpool Castle (replica) in Lever Park.
Here they were quickly joined by our BM2 Land Rover with team members Mike Marsh and Dave Marsh.
Local youths present camping and partying in the castle ruins, confirmed a distressed male had been seen earlier, and guided by SARLOC, Garry, Gill and Dave commenced a local area search in the darkness, of the dense woodlands and undergrowth on the Lower Rivington Reservoir shoreline.
The man, aged 48 from Horwich, was found by our Team Leader, joined quickly by Dave and Gill, and then team member John Dickinson.
He was comforted, and after confirming he was not injured, was assisted to our Land Rover BM2, which then took him, by arrangement with NWAS and Lancashire Constabulary, to Chorley Hospital for further observations.
This incident was concluded at 05.00hrs.
The following resources were involved in this incident:
- NWAS (Lancashire) EOC Broughton ; Control Room staff.
- Lancashire Constabulary ; Force Control Room / Force Incident Manager.
- Greater Manchester Police ; Force Control Room / Force Duty Officer.
- Bolton Mountain Rescue Team ; Two team Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances, and eight team members on scene.
