Incident 83/2007

With the knowledge that the team already had a small number of team members in team vehicles already around the Rivington and Belmont areas (we always notify our two NWAS Ambulance Controls whenever we are out and about), we were contacted by NWAS (Lancashire) at 15:07 to respond to the report of a woman collapsed in the Yarrow area of Rivington. On the very short journey to this RVP information was received that the RVP had changed to the general area of Anglezarke Quarry.

Four team vehicles were able to immediately respond, with a total number of twelve team members involved.

All met up to await a responding NWAS vehicle, at the base of Anglezarke Quarry / Leicester Mill Quarry car park, where we were held as NWAS Control tried to further establish the exact casualty location.

Fortunately a member of the public (who we believe had initially raised the alarm after his walking party had come across the woman) arrived at our holding point, and along with his wife was able to describe the woman’s location, and then came in our lead team vehicle to guide us as far as we could drive.

Thankfully, given the woman’s serious injury, the local reservoir access tracks combined with our having keys to all the locked farm gates meant that we were able to drive very closely to the woman’s location, on a small footpath leading from High Bullough Reservoir up a hill towards Anglezarke Reservoir, where she had unfortunately slipped, sustaining a very serious lower leg fracture.

The responding NWAS Ambulance meanwhile had arrived at the roadside RVP but could only access the tracks partway, where it held along with our Deputy Leader, who acted as a radio link to the casualty site for the Ambulance crew.
Team members by then were on scene very quickly and immediately offered the 50 year old woman pain killing gas, as well as reassuring her and her husband. (members of the public who had also comforted the woman up to our arrival were thanked as well).

A vacuum splint was then applied to the woman’s lower leg fracture, with pain killing drugs also being administered by team members.

A short stretcher carry on one of our Bell Mountain Rescue Stretchers saw the woman quickly evacuated to the comfort of the Ambulance at the holding point, and her onward transport to Royal Bolton Hospital for emergency treatment, where we subsequently discovered on retrieving some team equipment that she had had an operation to insert pins into her badly fractured lower leg.