At 09:47 this fine sunny morning, our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE was contacted directly by NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) Parkway EOC for the team’s assistance at an incident in Westhoughton, involving a fisherman who had sustained a serious lower leg fracture.

After gathering further information from NWAS, including the location on land off Slack Lane, Wingates, Westhoughton, Garry instigated a full team call out page at 09:53.

By 10:05 and 10:10, two of our Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances were mobile from our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ.

Team member Gill Leigh was first on scene at the Slack Lane RVP at 10:12, immediately followed by our Team Leader.

Gill went to the casualty site to liaise with the responding NWAS crew, as our first Land Rover arrived on scene at 10:17.

The fisherman involved had slipped on the fishing pond bankside, catching his foot in a hole – resulting in a serious lower leg fracture.

The NWAS crew had splinted his leg, and appropriate pain relief including morphine and Entonox had greatly assisted with the man’s pain.

On scene was the man’s wife and son, who had rushed to the site after he contacted them to tell them of his injury and predicament.

The casualty, from the Westhoughton area, despite his pain was in good humour, and greatly helped us by ‘hitching himself on to our stretcher’, as we loaded him on to a SAR Alpine Lite Mountain Rescue stretcher.

By 10:37 the injured man was safely in the responding Emergency Ambulance, which departed soon thereafter for Royal Bolton Hospital.

Our last team members left the RVP location at 11:00.

The following resources were involved in this incident:

• NWAS (Greater Manchester Area)
  • Parkway EOC and an Emergency Ambulance from Bolton South Ambulance Station, with two Paramedics and an EMT crew.
• Bolton Mountain Rescue Team
  • Two Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances, radio call signs ‘Bolton Mobiles 2 and 4.’
  • Fourteen Call Out list members involved on scene with one stood down responding.

Many thanks to the local dog walkers who kindly enquired what was happening and offered local advice on the paths and the location of the injured man.