Teamwork pays off for rescuers

POLICE officers and four mountain rescue teams have staged a joint training session near Uppermill.

Around 20 Greater Manchester Police search managers joined members of Oldham, Bolton, Rossendale and Glossop mountain rescue teams on the exercise.

Search managers are specially trained to deal with organising and running searches for missing people in urban areas — often involving youngsters, elderly or people classified as vulnerable.

The mountain rescue teams become involved where their skills can be used — such as areas of open land, country parks, woodlands, river banks or golf courses.

The event was launched with an introduction covering the background of mountain rescue.

Oldham Mountain Rescue Team (OMRT) demonstrated a rescue technique to raise a casualty up a steep slippery bank while strapped to a stretcher.

There was also a demonstration by SARDA dogs — the Search and Rescue Dogs Association — which hunt for human scent being carried in the air. They discovered two “bodies” in a few minutes in an area of about half a kilometre square on a hillside.

Rossendale demonstrated the use of their control vehicle and the latest GPS tracking devices which can indicate the exact location of individual team members while on rescues, while the Bolton team laid out the kit which is carried on its vehicles and the individual kit carried by team members when called out. An ORMT spokesman said: “We had detailed discussions and by working together we can get the best results with a knowledge of each other’s capabilities.”