Incident 12/2009

At 11:55 today our Team Leader was contacted by NWAS (Greater Manchester) about an incident in the Beaumont area of Bolton.

Three of our Bolton Mountain Rescue ambulances had just arrived at Hordern Stoops area of Winter Hill, where seven full team call-out members had congregated to walk up Winter Hill / Noon Hill as part of our Sunday area familiarisation / training exercises. A full team callout was initiated vi apager at 11:58 with all other personnel directed to meet at the RV point.

The three team vehicles arrived at the RVP at 12:16, the RVP being 500m away from the casualty site located in the middle of a farmers field full of livestock. The sister (who had been walking with the casualty) and brother-in-law of the casualty met with the team, directing the team across the extremely muddy field to the casualty. Shortly after our vehicles had arrived NWAA Helimed 08 also landed on scene.

The NWAS ambulance crew (from Bolton North Ambulance Station) were already on scene treating the 75 year old female casualty (from Bolton) who had fallen whilst crossing the field, suffering a suspected serious neck of femur fracture.

The ambulance was parked at a different RVP to our Landrover ambulances, and the decision was made to transfer the casualty to the land ambulance rather than using the helicopter due to operational circumstances.

The injured woman was administered morphine and Entenox by the ambulance and helimed crew, and then packaged in to our full length vacuum mattress to stabilise her injuries and transferred on to our Bell stretcher. Then the 18 team members who reached the RV point carried the casualty the 500m across a field to the waiting NWAS ambulance. The ambulance departed at 12:56 with the casualty to Royal Bolton Hospital.

© Carl Silver

The team would like to thank three local young lads who upon seeing the helicopter wandered across the field to see what was going on. To keep them occupied our Team Leader asked the children to look after the teams kit, much to the surprise of the children that we trusted them not to damage anything!

Following the evacuation all personnel returned to clean up, not so much the vehicles, more the muddy boots and leg ware of our members.

The whole team wishes the woman involved in this accident a speedy and successful recovery back to walking again in our local area.