During the early hours of this morning, emergency services saw themselves stretched in West Yorkshire due to weather related incidents. This culminated in Yorkshire Ambulance Service declaring a ‘major incident,’ and directly due to the high volume of calls upon their service, in a mutual aid agreement requested the assistance of NWAS (Greater Manchester Area)
The following is a part extract from the BBC West Yorkshire website, dated today:
Severe weather in Leeds and West Yorkshire
Ice has caused treacherous conditions in West Yorkshire, with the emergency services reporting high numbers of accidents on roads and pavements.
Black ice has resulted in an “exceptional” number of crashes, mainly on the motorway network, police said.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service said it had received “unprecedented” levels of calls relating to the ice.
It urged people only to call 999 if someone had a life-threatening illness or injury.
The service said it had activated its “major incident plan” to allow special arrangements to be put in place to cope with the surge in demand, including cancelling non-essential transport journeys to help with the 999 emergency service.
Dr Alison Walker, executive medical director at the trust, said: “The service has received hundreds of 999 calls for weather-related incidents and we are treating a lot of patients involved in road traffic collisions and injured in slips, trips and falls.
“These calls are in addition to other medical emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes.”
The resources then deployed by NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) to assist the situation in Yorkshire, resulted in turn in NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) requesting the assistance of our team and Oldham MRT to provide assistance to NWAS (Greater Manchester Area)
We were initially paged at 10.04hrs, answered by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, who consulted with NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) Emergency Operations Centre, as to what resources the Bolton MRT could place at the availability of NWAS. Our Team Leader also liaised with Mick Nield, his counterpart Team Leader in Oldham MRT.
At 10.26hrs the Bolton MRT membership was paged to standby alert, with a full team call out page being made at 11.10hrs for all available members to RVP at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ.
In liaison with NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) Emergency Operations Centre, three of our four Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances with three crew members on board each, were placed at the use of NWAS, controlled and co-ordinated by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE with initial help from colleague team members Alan James and Dave Marsh, in constant liaison with NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) Emergency Operations Centre.
The three vehicles and their crews throughout the early afternoon and into late afternoon responded to four emergencies, in the Hawkshaw, Great Lever, Bolton town centre and Tonge Moor areas.
Casualties ranged in age from four to sixty three, including two with medical conditions, a pregnancy and a fall.
All four casualties were transported to Royal Bolton Hospital by Bolton MRT vehicles for treatment.
As the afternoon wore on more Bolton MRT members became available, but by 17.25hrs in agreement with NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) Emergency Operations Centre, the Bolton MRT, with thanks from NWAS (GMA) EOC for our appreciated help was stood down.
By this stage eighteen team Call Out list members were available at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ with a further two of our Emergency Vehicles about to be declared available to NWAS, to join the three which had been deployed throughout the earlier part of the day. (One further Bolton MRT team member was stood down responding to our Base / HQ)
