Saving lives in wild and remote places

Team Exercises

March Practice 2007

03 Apr 07

Danby Beacon was the chosen location for Cleveland Search and Rescue Teams March practice 2007.

Saturday:

As team members arrived at 09.00 hrs the team were tasked with a technical rescue of two injured climbers, one suspended from a rope half way down a rock face on Danby Crags suffering from suspension trauma and the other casualty with spinal injuries at the bottom of a boulder cave.

Whilst the two rescues were underway there was a report of a local game keeper who had been missing and a search was being organised back at control. As the technical rescue scenario came to a successful conclusion, team members were then redeployed to search a large area of open moor land. The game keeper was found and treated then carried to a place of safety.

Lifting and loading a seriously injured casualty safely onto a stretcher requires skill, coordination, practice and most importantly team work to prevent further injuries.

Safe lifting and loading techniques are paramount to prevent further injury to the casualty and also very important for each team member to do correctly, to prevent injury to themselves.






Sunday:

The exercise for day two involved a large moor land search looking for two missing students who were involved in a night navigation exercise that had got misplaced or 'lost' as we call it.

Team members and vehicles were deployed to various areas around the Danby Beacon area. Two people were found in separate locations and confirmed to be the two we were tasked to search for. This was all done in a very impressive short time.

All the necessary medical and evacuation equipment was deployed to the incident sites and both persons were carried out to vehicle support on stretchers.

Carrying a stretcher normally requires a minimum of eight people. The casualty carer has sole responsibility of monitoring the casualty during the evacuation.

Any additional personel are then used to share the carrying of the stretcher to share the workload. We normally change stretcher carriers whilst moving without stopping to be as prompt as we can to get them to additional medical support.




The rest of the afternoon was spent posing around and having photos taken of team members wearing our new team jackets which have been kindly bought for the team by HSBC Bank and supplied by Montane.