Our usual Wednesday night training exercise held on May 29th, literally had someone drop in on us when we were joined by “India 99”, the GMP Air Support Unit helicopter. Held on the steep sided old coal tip at Wharton tip, Over Hulton, Salford, a location where the team has attended two serious off-road motorcyclist accidents, as well as a recent search for a missing child. The exercise involved 33 team members in the evacuation of 1 walking wounded exercise casualty and 2 on MRT stretchers. “India 99” landed to load up one of our casualties joined by one of our many team First Aiders (lucky team members Debbie and Alistair) for a short air experience flight.
Next for some experience with the helicopter was our search dog “Blue” and her handler Paul, after which it was time for the ASU to depart for their Barton base, after first demonstrating their Skyshout and Nightsun equipment.
And with that we were still left to carry two exercise casualties back the 1 km, to our team vehicles at the Dun Mare pub. (well there’s got to be a drink at the end of such a carry!!)
So a big thanks to our friends at GMP ASU for joining us and practicing what we may jointly be called out to carry out! (and to the Dun Mare for hosting us afterwards.)

Short videos of our GMP ASU exercise are available. Please choose the file to match your preferred player & connection speed combination:

Windows Media, 56Kbps
Windows Media, Broadband
Real Player, 56Kbps
Real Player, Broadband