Incident 71/2008

At 06:20 this morning our Team Leader was contacted by Greater Manchester Police regarding an urgent search in the Belmont area for a missing person. Our Team Leader was then asked to contact the local police officer running the investigation, to discover that the missing person’s vehicle had been located on a moorland car park just above the Ward’s Reservoir, Belmont (commonly known as the Blue Lagoon).

The Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit helicopter was being scrambled to this urgent search at the same time that our Team Leader was in initial talks with the Police.

At 06:25 the full team was paged to go to an urgent standby.

The Police then contacted our Team Leader to say that the missing person had been located on the side of Winter Hill by the Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit helicopter, which landed nearby, dropping off a crewmember to assess the man’s condition.

GMP now requested the team to urgently attend the Belmont area in case a stretcher evacuation was required.

At 06:50 on this very sunny yet quite chilly morning, a rescue pager call was then sent replacing the search standby page of earlier.

As our Deputy Leader, Geoff Seddon arrived on scene at circa 06:55, he was met by Police officers who had escorted the 54 year old man involved down to the roadside.

A stand-down message was paged at 07:01 by which time our Team Leader and team member Matthew Hailwood had also reached the scene (very nearby our BM1 & BM3 vehicles turned round to go back to our LBH base.

Whilst awaiting the arrival of an NWAS (Lancashire) ambulance, the 54 year old man involved was monitored and comforted by our Deputy Leader in his vehicle.

The man was transferred to Royal Bolton Hospital with the departure of the emergency ambulance at 07:27.

This urgent search involved our three members on scene and at least 13 other Bolton MRT members who were stood down responding. Resources from Greater Manchester Police included a number of local divisional officers, and the GMP ASU helicopter, India 99, alongside the NWAS (Lancashire) ambulance crew (Two colleagues of the missing man were also in attendance). This was a somewhat unusual early morning search which rapidly turned into a rescue (although our services, other than at the roadside, were not ultimately required).