At 10.21hrs NWAS (Manchester Locality) paged the team for assistance with an incident at Withington Golf Course. They had received an emergency call relating to a male who was reported to be on the Golf Course suffering from a life threatening condition.

An Ambulance crew had been despatched to the Golf Course, initially at the request of Greater Manchester Police, who had received the emergency call first, but upon arrival at the vast Golf course the NWAS crew could not locate the male who had made the emergency call.

The crew requested MRT, as GMP commenced an immediate search to try and locate the male involved. A full team pager call was activated at 10.27hrs on this workday morning, and team members quickly responded to this lowland incident at the southern end of our operational area.

In constant contact with NWAS Belle Vue Control, our Team Leader learnt that GMP had located the person involved away from the Golf Course, on the towpath of the River Mersey in the Northenden area of South Manchester, (a passing GMP Mounted Division horse patrol had come across the male) and a new RVP was arranged on the hard shoulder of the link road from Princess Parkway to the M60 Motorway in South Manchester, which gave access to the casualties location via the local footpath network.

Our first responding member arrived with the Ambulance and Police Officers at this new RVP., shortly followed by our Team Leader and first responding Team Vehicle at 11.06hrs., to learn that the GMP Air Support Unit helicopter that had been involved in the search had landed near to the male involved, (Parkway Playing fields), and that NWAS required the team to very urgently stretcher evacuate the male to the waiting Police Helicopter for a high priority urgent helicopter evacuation to Wythenshawe Hospital.

The twelve responding team members, assisting the NWAS crew and GMP Officers on scene, quickly stretcher evacuated the male to the waiting helicopter, then jointly with GMP Officers, provided take off ’Cordon Safety’ for the helicopter, which departed at 11.31hrs for the short emergency flight to Wythenshawe Hospital with a NWAS crew member accompanying the male in the Police helicopter.

The condition of the male casualty involved was very serious warranting a very fast response which was undoubtedly aided by the excellent co operation of all three emergency services involved, including the GMP Police helicopter. (with which, on the October Joint Foundation Course, we had training for such an eventuality as this incident) A special mention must be made for all at NWAS Belle Vue Control who did much by way of supplying us with constant updates as to the progress of this life threatening urgent incident, and in directing our resources to the new RVP.