Incident 81/2009

At circa 20.50hrs this evening, NWAS (Manchester) Control contacted our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE direct by mobilephone, to request the teams immediate assistance with the report of a person who was reported lying injured in the fields of the Golf Club in Harwood, Bolton.

In liaison with Ambulance Control an RVP was established at the entrance to Harwood Golf Club, and a full team pager call out was made at 20.56hrs.
During the response it became established that the incident site was actually in the very nearby Bolton Open Golf Course, on Longsight Lane, Harwood, and a revised RVP was paged out.

Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes arrived on scene at Longsight Lane at the same time as the responding NWAS (Manchester) Emergency Ambulance, at 21.18hrs, very closely followed by team members Neil Warburton, Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon and Matthew Hailwood.

On hand to meet the Ambulance and MRT members were some male youths on mountain bikes who had been at the incident site some distance away on the golf course, and who offered to guide team members and the ambulance crew to the scene, informing all that it was an 18 year old young woman who had fallen, sustaining a leg injury.

With the arrival at 21.23hrs of our first team vehicle, a small party with essential casualty care equipment was despatched to the casualty site, along with the two Ambulance women, all kindly guided by the youths.
To guide in the stretcher party which was assembling, this initial response group laid a trail of chemical ’light sticks’ to the casualty site.

The youths kindly returned to the roadside RVP to guide in the stretcher party, which arrived at the casualty site by 21.47hrs, where treatment was already being carried out by the NWAS crew and our team members to splint the womans suspected fractured leg in a vacuum splint.

In very considerable pain, the woman was given ’Entonox’ pain killing gas on scene, and was evacuated on our Bell MR Stretcher back to the NWAS Ambulance at Longsight Lane by 22.12hrs, here the young womans mother who had been called to the scene was on hand to further comfort her daughter.

The 18 year old woman, a resident in nearby Harwood, was taken to Royal Bolton Hospital, with all our team members leaving the scene by 22.50hrs.

The following resources were involved in the treatment and rescue of this woman;

• Bolton MRT, 21x team members and three of our Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance vehicles.
• NWAS (Manchester) Emergency Control at Belle Vue. As usual, thanks for all the guidance to the casualty location and control support.
• NWAS (Manchester) Emergency Ambulance and two crew members from Ramsbottom Ambulance Station.

A special thanks to all the youths who so freely helped us, by guiding us the the casualty location, which would have been difficult to find without their help and then helping by holding torches and search lamps for us while we splinted the womans injured leg.

Postscript: On Saturday 24th October 2009, the mother of the woman involved contacted our Team Leader Garry Rhodes to pass on her grateful thanks for all we had done to rescue her daughter. She reported that her daughter had fractured her leg in two places, and that she was awaiting an operation scheduled for Sunday 25th October to pin and plate her leg fractures. The mother also said that as soon as her daughter is fit enough to travel, she wishes to come along and visit the team to personally thank all her rescuers.
The whole team wishes the young woman a speedy recovery back to full health and we await her kind offer to visit us.