This morning as with all previous New Year mornings following on from New Years Eve’s (For sixteen years now, commencing on 31st December 1998) 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) assisting with a very high volume of calls upon its services, as part of the NWAS ‘Step Up’ procedure to mobilise additional resources to cope with the situation.

We were formally requested by pager at 20.17hrs yesterday evening, to be available from circa 21.30hrs on New Years Eve 31st December 2013 onwards in to the early hours of this morning.

The team members who attended found themselves dealing with eleven separate incidents the first request to us from NWAS being at 00.21hrs, and the last call from NWAs coming in at 03.22hrs.

We were working alongside additional resources also drafted in to help NWAS on what is now its busiest evening and early morning of the year, these including assets from the British Red Cross and St John Ambulance, and major NWAS resources.

All four of our Land Rover MR Ambulances were crewed with 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 fifteen team Call Out list members, assisted by one NEWSART Call Out list member, operating out of our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ, responding to the incidents of this morning.

Many of the incidents we attended involved intoxication to some degree, with in some cases NWAS assets and Greater Manchester Police resources also involved.

Injuries dealt with included falls, collapses, head injuries, a very serious leg fracture and a woman who had fallen down stairs, requiring appropriate spinal management.

In many cases, casualties were transported to local Hospital Accident and Emergency Departments directly in our Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance vehicles.

Incident locations attended included Moss Side, Manchester, Manchester City Centre, Leigh, Little Hulton, Deane, Blackrod, Bolton, Halliwell and Heaton.

All our members had returned to our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ by 05.30hrs, with all kit checked back on to our four vehicles involved, all items requiring such restocked and our Base / HQ made clean and tidy for whatever the rest of 2014 is due to bring us!

The last team members left our Base / HQ at 06.00hrs.

During the late afternoon of today, after some much needed sleep, two team members Steve Fletcher and Mike Marsh, journeyed to Manchester Hospital to retrieve some casualty care equipment used on one of our incidents attended, and they also carried out some minor maintenance work to one of our vehicles involved earlier today.