Incident 86/2013

Late this very warm and dry evening, Lancashire Constabulary were made aware of an incident in the vicinity of Darwen Tower (Jubilee Tower) and investigating Officers located three male youths, all apparently intoxicated, one of whom, a 21 year old from the Darwen area, had sustained a suspected ankle fracture.

An immediate request due to the moorland location was made for mountain rescue assistance, alongside Lancashire Constabulary contacting NWAS (Lancashire) for their obvious involvement.

At 22.26hrs via the SARCALL system, we were paged (With our ‘Call Out contacts also receiving text and email notification) by Lancashire Constabulary informing us of their request for a casualty evacuation from Darwen Tower.

Experienced team member Steve Fletcher contacted Lancashire Constabulary (Blackburn) to obtain more details, whilst our Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon contacted the Lancashire Constabulary Force Incident Manager, and our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE contacted NWAS (Lancashire) EOC Broughton.

With team members already en route to team vehicle garage locations and the incident location, at 22.45hrs a full pager call out was initiated with the message containing more information and a detailed RVP.

At 22.53hrs our first team member Gyles Denn arrived at the Manor Road / Belgrave Road, Darwen RVP, at the base of one of the numerous moorland tracks leading up to Darwen (Jubilee) Tower.

Here Gyles met with the responding Police Officers and the NWAS crew.

At 23.00hrs the first of our three responding Mountain Rescue Land Rover ambulances arrived at the RVP, our BM4 vehicle, and accessed the moorland track network, with a Police Officer on board, to locate the casualty site.

Our Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon, with Mike Marsh as his passenger, in his 4WD Vehicle, then arrived at the RVP at 23.05hrs, and taking an NWAS Paramedic on board his vehicle, he also accessed the moorland track network.

At this same time our BM4 and its crew had located the casualty site, and commenced casualty care of the mans displaced right ankle.

Entonox pain killing gas was administered and by 23.11hrs his ankle was splinted using one of our specialist vacuum splints.

By 23.17hrs our second Land Rover BM3 was at the casualty site, by which time it had been decided to evacuate the injured male in our Deputy Team Leaders vehicle.

Finally our third Land Rover responding arrived at the RVP and accessed the track to assist with transporting the two companions of the injured male back to the RVP.

By 23.31hrs the casualty was at the roadsire RVP on Manor Road / Belgrave Road and transferred to the NWAS Emergency Ambulance for further assessment.

The Ambulance departed at 23.55hrs for Royal Blackburn Hospital, with all team vehicles and members leaving the Incident RVP by midnight.

We would like to express our thanks to the residents of Manor Road / Belgrave Road, Darwen, for their understanding with the use of their quiet residential area, as the emergency vehicle RVP.

The following resources were deployed to this incident;

• Lancashire Constabulary; Four Officers and their vehicles from Blackburn and Darwen Division.
• NWAS (Lancashire); EOC Broughton and an Emergency Ambulance with a Paramedic and an EMT 1 on board, from Darwen Ambulance Station.
• Bolton MRT; Seventeen Team Call Out list members on scene, with a further three stood down responding to this incident, and three of our Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance vehicles (BM2,3,4)