Incident 21/2009

At 14:31 today NWAS Control (Manchester) paged the team asking for assistance with a casualty in a quarry in the Foxholes Lane area of Horwich.

On reaching the RV site the team decided to re-locate to Georges Lane as the casualty had been located in Ridgeway Delf Quarry, in the Montcliffe area of Horwich.

The female casualty had fallen 4m from a lower section of the quarry, with her shoulder taking the force of the impact. The casualty had phoned her husband, who in turn had called 999.

The scene of the incident, at the base of Ridgeway Delf Quarry

Due to the mechanics of the accident the woman was treated for a suspected spine injury, so stabilising the casualty was the first priority. Due to the conditions, with the cloud closing in, the team assisted in sheltering the casualty from the elements.

After receiving Entonox pain relieving gas and morphine, the casualty was loaded on to a spine board before loading on to our Bell Mountain Rescue stretcher.

The casualty was carried to the awaiting ambulance before continuing her journey to hospital.

The casualty is evacuated by team members to the waiting NWAS ambulance.

In total 11 full team callout members were involved in this incident with further members who had ’stood down responding’.

NWAS resources involved in this incident included an Emergency Ambulance, two Urban Search & Rescue vehicles, and two Area Operations Managers.

At the conclusion of this incident the team received a pager call informing the team our assistance was being considered for a search in the Hindley area of Wigan later in the evening. See incident 22/2009 for further details.