Journeying to the far north east of our team primary operational area this evening, team members assembled for an exercise on the moorland area of Hoddlesden Moss and Orrell Moss.

Based upon the scenario of an injured hill walker – with thanks to Amy Lowe, aged 19 for her acting skills, who ‘dialled 999 after stumbling and breaking her ankle’ on a night time moorland solo walk, complicated by being unsure of her location and then mobile phone communications with her being lost!

All team members assembled at the exercise RVP on Roman Road to the east of the Darwen conurbation, in the vicinity of Haddocks, for the exercise start at 20.00hrs.

With a search area centred upon Grey Stone Hill, search parties were despatched to undertake a quick search of all the public rights of way in the area of Hoddlesden Moss and Orrell Moss, setting off form drop off points on Roman Road, from south of Hoddlesden and Broadhead Road.

Search control was from our Incident Control Vehicle, with Neil Aspinall and Bob Hutchinson, later joined by Steve Fletcher, co-ordinating the exercise, overseen by the exercise organiser, Garry Rhodes MBE our Team Leader.

A quick exercise casualty find was made by team members in ‘Party 5,’ on Grey Stone Hill, where team member Nigel Booth had sat (for safety) keeping Amy Lowe company until she was found.

Amy was treated for an ‘exercise’ ankle injury, and kept warm whilst the stretcher party made its way up to her location.

The evacuation part of the exercise was curtailed, when with time moving on, some of our deploying members started to experience issues with diverted public rights of way routes, not shown on the OS maps in use, and very testing ground conditions underfoot.

By 22.45hrs all members were back at control and accounted for, and all departed back for our garage locations.

In total we had all four of our Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances deployed to the exercise, plus our Incident Control vehicle.

27x Call Out list team members and 6x Trainee team members were directly involved in this exercise.
During the exercise, local land owner Paul Johnston of Haddocks Farm / Moor View Equestrian Centre, called in to our ‘control point’ to see what we were doing, and was very interested in the exercise, and even kindly offered us the use of his land as a future training venue.