East Cumbria Search Panel

Sunday was my second day out training with the Kendal Mountain Rescue Team. The training was a joint exercise led by Penrith – the East Cumbria Search Panel…

Interestingly the exercise was being part led by Penrith’s deputy team leader, Jon! It was great to see Jon (although I was quite jealous of his impressive suntan, gained on recent – un-blogged 🙁 tut tut Jon – adventures in the Alps).

Anyway, after catching up with Jon it was back to work. Very quickly several search teams from other MRTs were deployed, however, Kendal were initially held back in reserve. This was a little frustrating, standing around idle on such a glorious day. But soon enough we were given orders to search an area of Wet Sleddale…

Very soon after we started our search our eagle-eyed team member, Ian, spotted a flash of orange survival-bag. An impressively quick find. Which meant that while Keith managed the casualty, with assistance from Helen, and Ian liaised with exercise control, I got a chance to sit back and enjoy the wonderful sunshine! 😎 After that it was time to get stuck in to the hard work of evacuating the casualty on a stretcher back to the road where a virtual-ambulance was waiting to whisk them off to hospital.

The exercise was then complete and we were recalled for a short de-brief outside the control centre, Shap fire station. Our casualty was given a chance to provide some feedback. All of which was glowing… He was super impressed by our speed, he’d prepared himself for a whole day sitting waiting to be found, but it had taken only two hours. And he said the casualty management was fantastic. Now I can’t take any of the praise, having played a very very small part in the exercise, but never-the-less it was fun to take part, and great learning.

Also, the gathering for the de-brief presented an opportunity to grab a photo of a sea of red-jacketed mountain rescue personnel from all manner of teams including the RAF and Police.