Incident 16/2016 – Snow Sledging accident at Rivington

At 14.12hrs this snowy Sunday we were paged by NWAS (Cumbria and Lancashire) Broughton EOC, to respond to assist with a snow sledging accident at Rivington, involving a thirty year old woman.

Due to the existing snowy conditions, team members were present at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ, with one team Land Rover already out mobile in the teams operational area.

The call was answered by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, with members quickly responding at the same time from within the team area and from our Base / HQ.

With three team vehicles already responding, at 14.20hrs a full pager call out message was sent.

Also at 14.20hrs our first team Land Rover, ‘Bolton Mobile2’ arrived on scene at the RVP stated, in the vicinity of Rivington Hall Barn, Lever Park, Rivington.

At 14.27hrs our second responding Land Rover arrived closely followed by our Incident Control Vehicle.

By 14.32hrs our first team member had located the actual casualty site, and led in the rest of our team to assist the NWAS emergency crew already on scene, with the injured woman.

Located by the former plant nursery site to the Terraced Gardens, the injured woman was carefully lifted over a fence, and in to our Land Rover ‘Bolton Mobile 2’ which had managed to closely access the incident scene, thanks to the network of local tracks.

By 15.00hrs this incident was complete, with the woman sledger on route to hospital for further treatment.

Thanks are expressed to United Utilities Ranger Andrew Ryding, a former Bolton MRT member, who also attended, in his capacity as the local Ranger on duty, to lend his valued assistance.

During the latter stages of this incident the team was paged at 14.42hrs by NWAS to a second sledging incident, which team members responded to concurrent to this on going incident.

The following resources were involved in this incident;

• NWAS; EOC Broughton, Emergency Ambulance and two crew.
• Bolton Mountain Rescue Team; Two Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances, Volkswagen Sprinter Incident Control Vehicle, seventeen team operational members on scene.
• United Utilities; Area Ranger Andrew Ryding.