On Thursday 19th November, team callout list members Dr Clare Witney and Steve Nelson travelled to the HQ and Training Centre of Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service to take part in their Incident Safety Assessment and Control (ISAC) Course.

The course is designed for emergency service personnel attending major incidents, providing them with the necessary skills to establish safe working practices and to cooperate safely in multi-agency response environments.

The course commenced with an introduction from Dr. Mark Forrest, Medical Director of Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service. The course was a mixture of lectures, practical demonstrations and exercise scenarios. These exercises involved very realistic multi casualty situations involving vehicle collisions, collapsed building extrications, and rescues from confined spaces, all based at the excellent training facilities at Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service HQ.

Clare and Steve fully joined in with members of the Fire Service and NHS staff, gaining valuable experience of the varied equipment and protocols used.

Clare and Steve would like to thank all the lecturers and fellow emergency services colleagues on the course for welcoming them so openly (one lecturer being team callout member Alistair Greenhough, A&E charge nurse at Warrington Hospital) They both found it a very enjoyable and highly informative day.

The day concluded with a debrief and certificate presentation which was interrupted by the bleeping of two pagers “Call-out search Wigan” Ah the joys of MR!!