After a great deal of planning and consideration by our Training Officer Alistair Greenough in liaison with our Equipment Officer – Water David Cook and Equipment Officer – Ropes and Stretchers Nigel Booth, tonight saw the membership split in to two separate training themes for the next four Wednesday evening weekly training sessions.
One group will be covering rope work, with the aim to get all members up to a common standard, and building upon specific rope work training that has been taking place for many months now, whilst the second group, consisting of our (integral to the team) water team members will be concentrating on consolidating their training around boat work and water operations.
The ‘rope group’ met at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ this evening, for a prompt start, with the nineteen attending members split in to two identical training awareness sessions, one under the tuition of our Training Officer Alistair Greenough, assisted by Heath Doran and the other under the expert guidance of our Equipment Officer –Ropes and Stretchers Nigel Booth, ably assisted by Gary Melia.
This one and a half hour hands on practical session covered the use of the Petzl ID, Italian Hitch knot, Triple Wrap Prussik Knot and SAR Rocker.
At the completion of this training members then prepared display items to be taken to Saturday’s Darwen Town Centre 999 Day on 18th July.
Meanwhile our ‘water babes’ were out on the waters of High Rid Reservoir, Lostock, where the seven team members present practised handling skills relating to our 3.4 metre long semi-rigid inflatable SAR Boat, including capsize drills (our now redundant out of service old outboard motor adding a little extra weight to proceedings)
Present for this training was Equipment Officer – Water David Cook, Dave Marsh our DVSD Handler along with DVSD Search Dog Sasha, John Dickinson, Equipment Officer – IT and Communications Steve Fletcher, Geoff Seddon, Ged Clarke and our Deputy Team Leader Chris Greenhalgh.
At the end of both of tonight’s separate training sessions, all met up for a social drink at the Bobs Smithy on Chorley Old Road.
