Amazing as it sounds, with all the operational activity that the team has been undertaking over this period of wintry weather, we have never stopped to count up all the individual incidents that we have actually attended, until this afternoon.

The Manchester Evening News staff attached to us asked the same question.

We were surprised to find out that since January 1st, team members have attended 51 separate operational incidents.

The wintry weather in the Bolton and surrounding areas generally started on the afternoon of Saturday 19th December 2009, commencing with an afternoon snowfall. Our first callout then came on the evening of this same day.

From the evening of 19th December, up to the evening of December 31st 2009, we attended 45 separate incidents.

This means in total since this wintry weather started in our team’s operational area on December 19th, continuing right through until today, the team has attended 96 separate incidents.

This represents a huge operational workload on the team over a very short time period of 20 days – particularly when one considers that each incident has to be reported, equipment and vehicles have to be replenished and cleaned (as do our team members!), with many incidental demands on our time such as retrieving team equipment from hospitals.

Needless to say the routine training functions of the team have taken a back seat and we apologise here for any lateness in replying to anything other than operational correspondence.


We particularly apologise to any person or organisations which have sent in donations to the team, although all of these donations have been acknowledged on our website, we have yet to reply formally in writing with letters of thanks.

Thank for appreciating our situation, we’ll catch up when the snow finally melts!