At 16.20hrs this sunny afternoon, with some members present at the BMC Wilton Fest event, we were paged by GMP to assist immediately with a developing search for a missing 77 years old woman, in the Astley Bridge area of Bolton.

Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE liaised with GMP, and a full team pager call out following a brief standby was made at 16.32hrs.

A large number of team members and all our team vehicles arrived at the initial search RVP of Eden Lodge, Eden Street, Astley Bridge by circa 17.30hrs.

Here our Team Leader was further briefed on the growing GMP search operation, which earlier had included overflights by an NPAS helicopter of the area.

Given the woman’s age and the length of time she had been missing (Since circa 12 noon) concern was mounting for her welfare.

As initial Bolton MRT search parties were being deployed at just after 18.00hrs came the excellent news that via CCTV, the missing woman had been located in the area of Ashburner Street Market, Bolton, and Police Officers were despatched to locate her, which they did soon afterwards.

At 18.10hrs all deployed Bolton MRT, Police and GMFRS resources were stood down.

During the search for this woman considerable use, as is common nowadays, was made of social media, to try and locate the whereabouts of this woman.

The following resources were deployed to this search operation;

• GMP; Considerable Divisional resources including patrol Officers, PCSO’s and CID, one Tactical Aid Unit and a Police Missing Person Search Manager.
• GMFRS; Drone Unit, including vehicle and two pilot / operatives, and a GMFRS Station Manager Officer.
• Bolton Mountain Rescue Team; Twenty team operational members present on scene and a further four stood down responding, four Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances, our Ford Transit Minibus / Crewbus and our Incident Control Vehicle.
• SARDA Ireland North; One DVSD Search Dog Team, Handler Dave Marsh of Bolton MRT (included in above personnel figures) with DVSD Search Dog Sasha.
• SARDA Wales; One Mountain Rescue Trailing Dog Team, Handler Steve Nelson, Navigator Elaine Gilliland, both of Bolton MRT (included in above personnel figures) with Trailing Search Dog Boris.