Incident 79/2012

At 19.29hrs this damp evening, we were paged by NWAS (Manchester) Emergency Control Centre to respond to an incident in the Wigan area.

The call was answered by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE who gathered further information from NWAS ECC and then paged out the full team at 19.36hrs.

We had been asked to respond to the report of an injured man in fields, in the Poolstock Lane area of Wigan, with an NWAS Emergency Ambulance also en route to the incident.

Our First team member Nick Berry arrived on scene at 19.58hrs, to find that the NWAS crew from Wigan Ambulance Station, had placed the 31 years old male casualty in an ‘Ambulance Chair,’ and were nearing the Ambulance.

As other team members quickly arrived on scene, it was established that our services were no longer required, and at 20.03hrs from scene we paged a full team stand down.

The man involved had been out walking his dog along the Leeds Liverpool Canal towpath, when the dog had apparently tripped him up, resulting in a serious lower leg fracture.

With no mobilephone on his person, the man had shouted out for help to no immediate avail, but thankfully his call was eventually heard, but not before the injured man had hobbled closer to nearby roads, so his cries for help could be heard.

His injured leg was splinted by the responding NWAS crew, who also administered drugs for his pain, and then took the man to Wigan Hospital.

At the conclusion of the incident, Team member Alistair Greenough, kindly took the injured mans dog back to his home address, whereupon he also further kindly took the injured mans wife to hospital to meet with her husband.

We responded to this incident with two of our Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances, both being stood down responding (One very close to the incident location)

In total eight Bolton MRT team members were stood down on scene, with a further eighteen team members stood down responding to this incident on route.

The NWAS (Manchester) Emergency Ambulance was from Wigan Ambulance Station.