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Story on the BBC about a search dog going missing in Norfolk woods sparking a huge search involving lots of aimilar search teams ironically.
Anyway, Mountain Rescue and Coast Rescue seem logically dangerous terrains which need search teams. But not convinced our pastoral lowlands really need the same? Is this just an excuse to wear a uniform like those 4x4 rescue folk that there was abthread about recently?
Or are the badlands of e.g Thetford Forest really dangerous?
Quite a lot of mountain rescue call-outs are things like ankle sprains and breaks rather than mountaineering accidents etc, which I guess can happen just as easily on a lowland path with poor access for conventional ambulance services as they can on a hill or mountain path. So yes, I guess there probably is a need for them. Similarly, you can fall off a mountain bike pretty much anywhere, low down or high up.
Or are the badlands of e.g Thetford Forest really dangerous?
The volume of people suggests there will be some issues needing support, and you can be an awkward few hundred metres or more from a vehicle.
Ambulance crews are not set up to carry stretchers over rough ground.
So yes, it makes sense to have some lowland rescue, but yes a little less glamorous.
Even in the lowlands people have accidents a long way from roads and easily accessed places. Thousands of people go missing each year and lowland rescue are used to search woodlands, moors, riverbanks, fields and anywhere else where additional manpower and resources are required over and above what the paid emergency services can provide.
The Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA) are always busy around here. As above it’s not just mountains that have people going missing or are dangerous
Mountain rescue teams are often called in to help look for missing vulnerable people in low lying areas up here (I don't think we have lowland search teams?), we had 3 days searching the coast along the solway earlier in the year.
As above, MRT do a lot more than you think.
Lowland sar teams are extremely useful at quickly mobilising large numbers of people to look for vulnerable missing or despondent individuals.
They also massively bolster the police resources and have a degree of education in search techniques, not disturbing evidence, immediate life saving as well as bringing a co-ordinated search effort.
also its for people who want to wander around in a uniform.
I have work3d with the 4x4 gang, the lowland lot as well as many other NGO’s.
They are by no means the worst people to have out looking for you.
Also ambulance do have the facility/capability to evacuate casualties from woods hills etc in the form of HART.
Even in the lowlands people have accidents a long way from roads
or even a short way from a road
my neighbour broke his leg in a tumble down a steep, muddy wooded embankment behind our house. You could get an ambulance to with about 200m but while the Ambulance crew could just about get to him to assess his condition they weren’t equipped to get him out without getting hurt themselves in the process . In the end it was a team of tree surgeons that hauled him back up (or what was left after the midges had been eating him for a couple of hours)
A mate of mine is a member of WilSARS, Wiltshire Search And Rescue, their job is supporting police and others looking for missing, vulnerable people. Wiltshire is a big county, and largely rural, once you’re away from the built-up part of Chippenham you’re in fields with ditches, hedges and watercourses where a disorientated person could easily and rapidly become lost and at risk of injury and possibly drowning, not to mention all the risks attached to drops in temperature along with changes in weather - hypothermia as well as hyperthermia can quickly set in. If someone goes missing in the Salisbury Plain area, well that’s vast, very open, and includes military ranges with live firing to complicate things, especially as there are villages and towns surrounding it, and a few inside. Get into the south Cotswolds around where I live, you have lots of steep, narrow interconnected valleys mostly with rivers and streams at the bottom, and frequently pretty muddy and slippery, and at this time of year, not a good place to be caught out after sunset, having slipped down a steep grassy, muddy bank several miles from the nearest village, with virtually no phone signal. Inappropriate clothing and footwear, which a vulnerable person is likely to be wearing, on a cool, damp evening like it is right now, could mean a person being at very real risk within a couple of hours, and speaking as someone who was born in the area with family going back three centuries, I know it reasonably well, but without knowing which way someone might have gone, trying to guess where they might be would be a huge logistical problem, one I’d hate to have to try to sort out. Here’s an aerial view of the area south of the M4, from Castle Combe to Marshfield and down to Colerne, an area I’ve walked and biked around for going on thirty years. If a visitor to Castle Combe had set off with a vague idea of walking a route to Ford, North Wraxall and back, and got lost or had failed to turn up after dark, it may be it might mean a delay of a couple of hours before they’re noticed as missing. In the dark, it would be as difficult as being in the Peaks, or Black Mountains to try to figure out where they might have ended up, you can see the valleys snaking through the area, most have water at the bottom, then there’s hedges of mostly blackthorn and hawthorn, barbed wire, thick mud…
Imagine trying to pick out someone wearing dark clothes with a helicopter searchlight!
Just to add, I’ve actually stopped a Japanese family who were planning on walking up the hill out of Castle Combe late one afternoon with an idea of doing a circular walk. It was starting to get dusk, and they were wearing hopelessly inappropriate clothes and shoes. It was very difficult to get through to them exactly how steep and slippery it was, I had a walking stick and I’d nearly fallen a number of times that afternoon, it was very, very muddy! Fortunately they accepted my explanation that it really wasn’t a good idea at all, but it took some getting through, there’s something of a barrier between English and Japanese, I’ve spent quite some time with Japanese students working for a friend of mine who lives at Nettleton, and trying to explain’muddy, wet, slippery and dangerous’ isn’t easy! It’s a popular tourist area.
“Also ambulance do have the facility/capability to evacuate casualties from woods hills etc in the form of HART.”
Unfortunately these capabilities aren’t as wide ranging and freely available as would be desirable, certainly in the South. The area the team covers is huge. It only takes one reasonable size deployment to virtually remove that capacity from large areas of the South/South East.
Like 4x4 response organisations LSAR will naturally attract the sort of people it’s easy to smirk at and raise eyebrows about their sticker adorned 4x4s etc but they do provide an essential volunteer service that does add to the capabilities of the ‘professional’ emergency services.
It's 30 years or more ago now (!) but someone died getting lost while walking on the outskirts of Ipswich in a pan flat part of the heathland behind the big Sainsbury's one snowy January. One doesn't need a big hill or mud to get into serious trouble at certain times of the year.
Personally I’ve been stretched off by Calder Valley search and rescue when I snapped ligaments in my knee. I was about 2-3 miles from the road and would have literally had to have crawled to the ambulance if they hadn’t turned up. Also a standard crew are not equipped to take on a OS grid reference so never would have found me anyway (they said that to me). p20 and Drac will be outliers in the ambulance service for carrying, and knowing how to use, the OS app on their personal phones. I know p20 has worked with local search and rescue many times to get people to a waiting ambulance. HART are too far away and too thin on the ground. The also offer a lot of support in bad weather, esp snow when the ambulances can’t get around.
Sadly a neighbour of ours died on the NYM (ok not lowland but also not mountains) after getting lost. That resulted in nearly every search and rescue in the region (plus people like us!) turning up to look for him.
Follow an MRT team on social media and see the range of incidents they get called out to. Searches and injuries can happen pretty much anywhere in the UK, if its not easily accessible by tarmac, more specialist support will be needed
I’m kind of surprised anyone thinks it’s not a good idea. As above, plenty of hazards, and once you’ve slipped into a culvert next too a hedge probably very very hard to spot
Remember this story, they could have done with the help of some lowland rescue
I would reiterate many of the points made already. The OP should take the opportunity, if it arises, to participate in EFAW+F training. Our team recently completed this, for the second time it's value is so great, in the woods at the top of Luxulyan valley which are not that remote but are difficult to access. Not only does it highlight the value of such services, it will also teach you the correct actions if found by a rescue dog. Ours was delivered by Matt Evans for Hi-Line.
Strange how some people have a perception that some people in lowland /4x4 rescue are slightly eccentric and like wearing uniforms and are to be laughed at but this doesn't get attributed to mountain / coastguard / RNLI team members.
They all willingly donate huge amounts of time for free and there would be many people much worse off without them.
“Also ambulance do have the facility/capability to evacuate casualties from woods hills etc in the form of HART.”
Friend is a HART paramedic, he spends a fair amount of time collecting body parts from railway lines after people jump in front on trains. Bit of spine here, head there, arm over there.....
They'll only have one or two teams on at a time and there coverage area is several counties, so they spend hours blue lighting it across counties only to be stood down just before arrival as someone else got there first / need for HART has been withdrawn.
My dad was a dog handler for nearly 20 years in the met police. Huge number of his jobs were searching for vulnerable people that had wandered off.
Not sure people realise how hard it is to effectively search an area for someone who is not shouting and wanting to be found. If there are civilian resources willing and able to help they will get my thanks and appreciation.
My local Holme Valley MRT are heavily involved in SAR work in both the lumpy end of West Yorks (Northern Peak / South Pennines which is where they’re based), and the flat side around Wakefield, Pontefract and Castleford (inc. Leeds Urban Bike Park). A pretty big area really and not sure how quickly they can mobilise to get to some of these places as it’s an hour journey without factoring in getting the people and equipment together.
https://holmevalleymrt.org.uk/index.php/what-we-do