It wasn’t so long ago that I said that I was going to be cutting down on my rescue work because of how busy we were going to be at work. Well, as it turns out, one of our deliveries has been delayed. Instead of arriving on Tuesday, it won’t be here until Monday now. This is both good and bad – it means we’ve had more time to prepare for the installation of this kit, but of course it means that we have one less week to build and test everything now. But hey, what’s life without its challenges?
So when the pager went off late Tuesday afternoon, Simon and I looked at each other. With the delays I decided to head off – this was likely to be the last rescue I could do for a while, or so I thought.
Up the A470, up the dual carriageway to base. Two other team members were there, and I got my kit out and jumped into the driver’s seat of the Landrover. We had a 25 year old woman with a broken ankle on Corn Du. With all of our lights on and sirens going, I headed out of the lane and onto the roundabout. Down the heads of the valleys road we went – a dangerous road this, it’s 3-lane all the way down and with patches of double white lines, it makes for a difficult drive on blues. Nevertheless, we got to the bottom safely and turned onto the A470 up towards the Beacons. It wasn’t long before we were turning into the lay-by at Pont ar Daf. We jumped out to find that the air ambulance was just landing alongside the casualty, so I parked the vehicle up and waited. The “no further personnel required” message came over the pagers and pretty soon it was all over. Back to base before heading home.
Wednesday night was a joint exercise with the Army medical corps up near Trefl quarry. We were just packing up when the Incident Controllers’ pagers went off – “Please contact Dyfed Powys control room”. We were asked to standby for a search for a 70-year old gent who was missing. Quickly packing up our kit, we rendezvous’d down at the nearby pub, where we got word to stand down from the police. After a debrief with the Army, we headed back to base to wash the vehicles and repack all the kit.
Thursday I spent in Portsmouth visiting a client. Not wanting to drive, I took the train, though that did mean that I didn’t get back to Cardiff until around 8pm. I headed home, needing food and rest more than training. I sat down with a cup of tea and sighed as the pager went off. ‘111’ I got changed quickly and headed out to the car. Driving up to base was uneventful and as I arrived, everyone was preparing to head out. We had 3 teenage Duke of Edinburgh’s award students who hadn’t arrived at their allocated checkpoint. We got the Landrovers ready as the IC’s planned our searches. Just as we were about to head off, the call came from inside – stand down. Apparently, one of their teachers had picked them up. Heading down to the pub, I had a pint or two of iced water before heading home to sleep.
So it’s been a busy week. We’re up to something like 40 callouts so far this year already, though it seems quieter than last year – it’s not, they’re just a bit more spread out this year. I’m not expecting to attend any more callouts now until September. We’ve not been placed on standby for the rain which is nice. Simon and I are heading to London on Wednesday to get some kit from Redbus, but that shouldn’t be a problem.
In other news, the company is setting up some blogs so that us techies can talk about some of the cool stuff we’re doing. Once we get them up, I’ll post a URL. For now, I’m just relaxing and watching “The Towering Inferno” – an old classic. A nice relaxing weekend for me for a change.