In the early hours of this New Years Day morning whilst providing assistance to NWAS (Greater Manchester Area) the team responded to eight incidents, the first at 00.32hrs and the last at 03.39hrs, with four casualties conveyed to hospital by Bolton MRT vehicles.

This morning as with recent previous New Year’s Day’s (For fifteen years now, commencing on 1st January 1999) the team had all four of it’s Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances and its Minibus Ambulance available, at the disposal of NWAS (Greater Manchester) who were experiencing a very high volume of calls upon its services.

The team was also working alongside St John Ambulance (Who we believe had mobilised three vehicles for this evening) and British Red Cross resources who were also drafted in to help NWAS on what is now its busiest early morning of the year.

The team had all four of our Land Rover MR Ambulances and Minibus Ambulance crewed, each with three appropriately trained MR personnel on board, all co-ordinated from our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ by our ’Control Team,’ themselves in contact with NWAS (Greater Manchester) Emergency Operations Centre, Parkway. In total we had eighteen team members involved.

The eight calls responded to involved three ‘falls at home,’ two reported assaults, and three cases where the casualties were intoxicated.

By 06.00hrs all five team vehicles were back at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ, where kit items utilised were checked over, cleaned and / or replaced where necessary, some ‘mountain rescue’ kit items temporarily removed for this mornings incidents were placed back on the vehicles, and our Base / HQ cleaned up and tidied.

By 07.30hrs all team members involved were back at their home addresses to catch up on their sleep!