Late this morning our colleagues at Rossendale and Pendle MRT were contacted by GMP to assist with a search for a missing male in the Rochdale area, resulting in a full team call out and a call to their neighbours at Calder Valley SRT to go to standby in case their assistance was required.

At circa 13.13hrs RPMRT contacted the Bolton MRT Call Out Contact group, which was answered by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE.

RPMRT were requesting our Mountain Rescue Trailing Search Dog Handler Steve Nelson and his Trailing Search Dog Boris.

Steve declared his availability later this evening, with RPMRT at circa 13.30hrs requesting Bolton MRT to also go to Standby should assistance be required as the search developed.

As a result of a full team group pager call out at 13.45hrs, ultimately eleven Bolton MRT team members declared their immediate availability, including our DVSD Search Dog Handler Dave Marsh and later in the afternoon, our Air Scenting Search Dog Handler Jess Ellsmore.

Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE liaised with our Deputy Team Leader throughout this afternoon, as regards our standby responses, and to make plans should we be mobilised.

Garry further updated RPMRT as our members declared their availability.

At circa 16.14hrs today RPMRT contacted Garry to inform him that at present the involvement of MRT in the search enquiry had been stood down by GMP, and that as a result Bolton MRT were no longer required at this stage (Calder Valley SRT were similarly stood down) with Garry informing our membership by pager at circa 16.18hrs.

By this time a further four Bolton MRT members had declared their availability from 18.00hrs onwards, including our Trailing Search Dog Handler Steve Nelson with Boris his Search Dog.

GMP are continuing their enquiries to locate this missing person.

This request for our assistance is noted here for the interest and information of our readership and does not feature in our Incident listings.

More information on this search may be found on the website and Facebook pages of our friends at Rossendale and Pendle MRT.