SARCALL is the activation and incident logging system – with many other features, increasingly becoming adopted at a national level within MREW.

Each mountain rescue region also has appointed ‘Silver’ Officers, in the case of MPSRO, our regional body, the two ‘Silver’ Officers per teams in Lancashire are the Team Leader and Deputy Team Leader.

This evening, the first test of the SARCALL MPSRO Silver Group / Lancashire, took place, co ordinated by Phil O’Brien of Bowland Pennine MRT.

His own team, Rossendale and Pendle MRT and our team …. that is the ‘Silver’ Officers in each team, all received at 19.05hrs this evening a SARCALL Mid Pennine Silver message, by SMS test, pager and email – or at least they should have!

The exercise message was topical, regarding a bad weather alert in Lancashire, and how many 4 x 4 vehicles were available in BPMRT, BMRT and RPMRT, from midnight to support the Statutory Services.

An appropriate reply was logged on SARCALL Silver by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, with eleven vehicles in total being available in the region.

As ever the exercise raised a few issues which can be addressed quickly, and overall worked well.

Tomorrow evening the Lake District regional mountain rescue body, LDSAMRA is hosting a desktop Major Incident exercise, ‘Exercise Cloud Burst,’ and this may involve a request via SARCALL MPSRO Silver Group, fro resources and assets from this region.

Andy Binstead, Deputy Team Leader of Bowland Pennine MRT will be assuming the role of MPSRO Silver Commander, should a request be made to MPSRO, and in this event will co-ordinate the MPSRO response.

Any suggestion that the naming of our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE as a ‘Silver’ Officer is linked to his grey some would say all over silver hair – what’s left of it that is, can be viewed as simply coincidental or entirely apt – you choose!