False Alarm – Helicopter Crash

At circa 19:45 our Team Leader Garry Rhodes was contacted direct by NWAS (Manchester) Control regarding the teams assistance at the reports of a helicopter crash in the Pemberton (?) area of Wigan.

As our Team Leader was on holiday in the Scottish Highlands at the time he advised ambulance control to contact our Deputy Leader Geoff Seddon directly.

In the interim our Team Leader made some calls to directly alert some team drivers.

At 19:48 having gained some initial information from Ambulance Control our Deputy Leader paged the team to go to immediate standby.

By 19:54 we were stood down by pager, it thankfully having been established that the 999 caller had misinterpreted the actions of a low flying helicopter.

We understand a multi-agency fire, police and ambulance response was being made at this time.

This has not been recorded in our official incidents and is mentioned here for informational purposes only.