Recently MRTs in England and Wales were invited to collectively send a small number of representatives to an evening reception planned for Monday 15th March 2010 in London, by HMG Department for Communities and Local Government, at Eland House, Bressenden Place, SW1E 5DU, to ’Recognise Community Spirit during the Severe Weather’ experienced within England and Wales over this recent winter.
Barbara Follett MP Parliamentary Under Secretary of State will be attending to meet representatives of organisations who provided voluntary assistance in helping their communities throughout this recent bad winter.
Of course readers to our website will be very familiar with how busy we were along with other MRTs in Greater Manchester and Lancashire particularly over the December 2009 and January 2010 periods, so we nominated three team members to attend this reception, with confirmation of their attendance having been accepted received today by the team.
All three are serving volunteer call out list members of Bolton Mountain Rescue Team, and will act both as representatives for the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team and for Mountain Rescue in a national sense. (Joining a small number of other MRT members from England and Wales also at the same reception)
Our members attending are Elaine Gilliland, aged 42, two years service in the Bolton MRT, Chris Tennant, aged 63, eleven years service in the Bolton MRT, and Fred Taylor, aged 61, eight years service in Bolton MRT.
All three of the above named Bolton MRT members are experienced fully trained mountain rescuers, all three are certified Casualty Carers within the team and all three act as Emergency Response Drivers within the team.
The Bolton MRT was very busy working primarily at the request of the North West Ambulance Service (Greater Manchester area) and Greater Manchester Police, during the extended period of snow and ice conditions that occurred in the Greater Manchester area mainly over the December 2009 to January 2010 timescale.
Over the period December 19th 2009 to January 13th 2010, the Bolton MRT dealt with 110x separate emergency incidents over a 25 day period, this is essentially a years operational workload for the Bolton MRT in less than a calendar month.
The incidents included retrieving ambulances stuck on snow and ice whilst responding to emergencies, stretchering casualties from snow and ice bound properties to waiting ambulances, escorting ambulances through snow, directly responding to emergency incidents at the request of the North West Ambulance Service when NWAS ambulances were not available due to other priorities at busy times, or could not get through to casualties due to snow and icy road conditions, getting District Nursing staff to patients in deep snow, rescuing injured snow sledgers, retrieving motorists stuck in deep snow and searching for missing persons in extreme wintry conditions.
All three Bolton MRT representatives mentioned above were personally involved in a great many of these incidents alongside their team colleagues.
All of the incidents were emergency situations with a great many involving trauma, two women in the late stages of labour and one incident in the early hours of New Years Day that involved a new born child barely minutes old when the Bolton MRT arrived to assist. (Elaine Gilliland was involved in this incident, subsequently being interviewed on television with the child and its parents)
On Tuesday 5th January 2010, the Bolton MRT dealt with 28 separate incidents, an all time record for the team.
Our contribution to the well being of the local community was acknowledged by the local press, local and national television, local radio and letters of thanks from Greater Manchester Police and the North West Ambulance Service.
Full details of all of the above can be found on the website of the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team at www.boltonmrt.org.uk within the ’news’ pages section.
The Bolton MRT is very honoured to have three members attending this Government Reception in London, keep watching the website for a full report on the event itself next week.
