It’s been abusy weekend. Friday night Steve, an old friend from London came up to stay for a few days which was nice – we hadn’t seen each other in a while, and although I had a full weekend planned, he was happy to get out of London for a while. So Saturday was mostly spent with Steve looking at various computer-related things until early evening when I got changed and headed down to Cardiff to go to the reception of Tim’s wedding. A fantastic night, forgeoing the usual disco Tim and Emma had decided to have a céilidh instead. We had a fantastic time, taking me back to teh days of Dawnsio Gwerin in the Eisteddfod when I was a boy.
Sunday dawned dull and too damned early in Mal’s house. We got up and decided that since we’d been drinking sloe gin until 0200, perhaps a spot of greasy breakfast was in order. A quick trip to the Tuck In in Canton later and we were set. We headed up to Caerphilly for our last session of training with the First Responders, or more accurately, or assesment. Almost a dozen of us sat in the pub nervously awaiting our invites upstairs to show how much we knew about CPR, AEDs and airway adjuncts. Mal and I, typically, were asked to wait until last. I think we were most nervous as we’d both been through the Mountain Rescue casualty care exam which is a real tough one – a written exam followed by two scenarios, for which the pass mark is very difficult to achieve – I think the failure rate on that course is about 30%. So I finally headed upstairs. I did my bit, answered the few questions that Gerrard had and got the excellent news that I passed the assesment. After a brief chat, we packed Gerrard’s kit back in his car and headed off.
That evening I showed a few of the group around base, which was a bit of fun. Unfortunately quite a few people couldn’t make it so we’re going to have to run that one again, but Mal and I had some good practice for doing this for the main group.
In other news, I’ve put my name down to on a party leader’s course with the Mountain Rescue team. This will kind of set a new direction for me if I get the opportunity to go – being a party leader is quite a lot of responsibility as you are the person in charge of that party and their tasks. Watch this space…
Some nights ago I came home to find Senghenydd wrapped in a heavy blanket of fog. In between the car and the house, I took a quick photo to see how my new camera copes with night – and it did quite well. I quite like this photograph…
Saturday will be the 40th anniversary of the worst Welsh disaster of the 20th century. At around 9:15am on the 21st October 1966, slag heap No. 7 which was perched above the village became waterlogged with a combination of recent heavy rain and underground springs slid down the hill into the village of Aberfan, destroying two streets of houses and burying the Primary school and part of the nearby Secondary school. In all, 144 people were killed – 116 of which were children. 
The picture here shows the extent of the disaster. In the months that followed the Inquiry found the NCB to be wholly negligent in their maintenance, and yet nobody was so much as disciplined. This website has some fascinating reports on why this was so.
Finally, the compensation awarded to the parents was only £500 per child, less what money they had received from the Aberfan Disaster Fund. The disaster fund itself was the subject of controversy, when the NCB refused to pay for teh removal of the other tips. The government offered £250,000, and the NCB contributed a further £250,000 but the government of the time forced the Disaster Fund to contribute £150,000 of its own money – a payment that was not refunded until Ron Davies came to power as the Welsh Secretary in 1997.
This is a story of several disasters, all of which were avoidable. In today’s society, the NCB would likely face criminal prosecution for corporate manslaughter but, as the saying goes, yesterday is a different country.
Last night I watched two programmes on Sky+, one from S4C with Rhys Ifans commenting and one from HTV following the return of I.C. Rapoport – an American journalist that captured the aftermath on film for Life magazine. The images and programmes are truly harrowing. I’m sure tonight’s training will be difficult, as a number of the members of the team were at Aberfan, helping to dig the bodies of the children out of the slurry.
In this day and age I would hope that, in this country at least, the concept of Corporate-Social Responsibility would prevent somethign like this from happening again. Those of you who read this: think. Your actions as individuals and as part of a corporation can have far-reaching impacts. Let’s not let Aberfan happen to anyone else.
After Sean came back from Canada and spent a week or two here, getting out of bed in the mornings and leaving him behind to go for a run before work seemed a lot harder. *grin* So my exercise regime has deteriorated somewhat since then, especially seeing as Sean gave me fresher’s flu (and also unfortunately gave it to Jon – or at least, that’s who Jon is blaming). So today was my first run after several weeks of little exercise beyond callouts – I haven’t even been out walking that much. On top of that all that, I was recovering from a cold.
So how did I do? Quite well, actually. Although I could feel the difference having not been running for a while, and the joys of coughing up what’s remaining of this cold, I managed my circuit in 48m28s – not bad considering I would be aiming for 45mins when healthy.
Hopefully, all this is going to pay off when it comes to Scotland in March. Woo.
On Friday I had a conversation with a supplier that went something like this:
Me: Hi, I need a quote from you guys for a managed server, with foo disks for the OS and bar disks for the Database, dual Xeon, 4Gb RAM,
Supplier: Sure. I’ll email it to you.
Me: Thanks.
This morning I get an email:
Hi, Here’s 2 options. One a dual Xeon, the other slightly cheaper is a Dual dual AMD, both with 4Gb RAM and foo disks.
Er, right. So, you got the spec half-right, where’s my extra disks? Seeing as the whole point of this box is to increase disk performance by using multiple RAID arrays (a point we discussed at length in my conversation with them) why did you give me a quote with only a single array?!
So, suppliers and salespeople, pay attention. If a client says “I want foo + bar” (where foo+ bar is an achievable combination), quoting for just foo on its own demonstrates a complete inability to listen to your client; perhaps even extreme incompetence.
The unfortunate thing is that we’re already using this supplier. I can see that changing RealSoonNow.
As I was on my way into work this morning, the pager went off. An uncommon call – this was an area search call – I can only remember two of these, the area call system is usually used to alert us of a casualty with a known location, however it can be used in extreme circumstances to ask for assistance from any teams with an urgent search. This one was for a missing motorcyclist, and the RV was here. Now I have to admit, looking at that map, I don’t recognise the area, so zooming out we see this. That’s right, folks, I could have been sat having breakfast with Sean in an hour or three.
Fortunately, the missing motorcyclist was found quickly and we were stood down. Another wonderful day at work instead then.
Today has been busy.
 I’ve spent most of it training with the Caerphilly First Responders, where we finished off our training, got a few bits of paperwork sorted and did our written exam. Next week we have our assesments. Malcolm came with me this week, and things went spiffingly, so looks like he’s going to be going for his assesment next week as well. The biggest challenge for both of us I think will be to not offer the more advanced care that we’ve been trained to provide in Mountain Rescue.
 Finally got home and I sat down…only to hear the pager go off. So I ran out, Area call in Grwyne Fawr, no details. So I quickly headed off up to base, and was just getting my stuff out of the car to jump into Alpha when the standdown came – apparently the police evacuated using their helicopter. Relax, sit down for 5 and then home again.
 I hope this isn’t turning into a repeat of our callout pattern a few years ago where we had around 15 Sundays on the trot interrupted by callouts – all late evening. That’s the way the cookie crumbles I suppose.
The BBC has a news story about a man who slipped and fell on ice while walking the Pyg Track in Snowdonia.
I guess this hilights two things for me. First of all, even if there’s no leader to a group, you stick together. This unfortunate chap fell and, according to the coroner, died on impact, so no matter how quick the help, they wouldn’t have been able to save him. However, if he hadn’t hit his head, noticing sooner rather than later could very well have saved his life.
Secondly, if you’re walking in snow and ice – or to be honest, even if you’re just walking in the mountains – Shit Happens. This chap was an experienced Alpine mountaineer and had the right equipment – and he still fell to his death. You can’t stop it happening, so prepare for it. For goodness sake, don’t invite it upon yourself by not taking basic preparations.
This also reminds me of a particularly cold day in the Beacons last year, in 40-60mph winds, freezing rain and temperatures of around -4 degrees C, I was walking up Corn Du in full winter gear – crampons, ice axe, snow goggles, full winter clothing and a rucksack full of essential gear. I aborted my walk because the weather was too poor – strong winds and icy conditions was making the path extremely treacherous. I took the path down to the Storey Arms from Corn Du as I had been walking up from the Obelisk, and I met a couple on their way up. They had light waterproof jackets, hats and gloves. I stopped as I approached them – by now, a little off the edge of the north face, we were in the lee of the mountain and conditions were much more cofortable.
“How far to the top?” asked the guy, after greeting me.
I looked them up and down, glanced over my shoulder, and again looked down at their crampon-less boots, light-duty clothing, and tiny funsack with half-frozen water bottles tucked into the side pouches. “I wouldn’t. The path is extremely icy, and to be honest the wind is so strong, I gave up on reaching the summit myself.” I said.
They looked at me, looked up at the summit, and looked at each other. I thought ‘If they’re heading up, I’m going to stop here until they come back down.’ Fortunately, as I was taking my rucksack off to get a cup of hot Ribena, the ice on my arm fell off and revealed the Mountain Rescue team badge. I noticed her nudging him and nodding at it, and they looked at the summit again.
“Thanks,” he said, “I guess we’ll head back then.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched them make their way down. I don’t often offer advice like that, figuring that a bad experience can teach you a lot about respecting the environment, but the north face of Corn Du and Pen Y Fan in any conditions are extremely dangerous. I also dislike “pulling rank” – Mountain Rescue is here to help everybody, and I have no delusions that there are far more experienced people than me out there. On that day, however, I was very glad of my team badge.
We’re there to help, when people need it. I’m just glad I was there to offer those two help on that day before, perhaps, they came to the same tragic end.
The second Sunday evening on the trot I was relaxing when the pager went off. It’d been a long wekeend anyway because I’d spent it with Sean in Aberystwyth, which is a 2 and a half hour trek up some interesting mid-Wales roads (each way).
Details were brief – a young chap, despondent, had disappeared and the Police were concerned. RV was a police station up in the Rhondda Valley near Pentre. So I pootled off out of the house determined this time to stop searching about 0300 so I could get enough sleep. Diesel was low, so I made my way there without rushing particularly hard, up through Pontypridd, Porth and up the valleys. The rain was pouring down – I wasn’t able to go very fast safely, so I slowed right down and pushed the wipers to their limits. Of course, by the time I arrived it had stopped, so I quickly grabbed my kit and ran in.
I was shown into the conference room where I saw 2 people – Dave one of our team members and John Williams, a highly experienced police search manageThis was it as it turns out, I’d managed to beat the team vehicles, so I pottered around getting changed and trying to source some tea and coffee for everyone (a difficult task at 2300 on a Sunday evening in a police station). Huw arrived in the first response Landrover and Alpha turned up bringing its own supplies so finally refreshments were sorted.
By around midnight, we had enough information about the misper to decide on a course of action, and Dave was ready to get going, tasking in hand, when a message came through. We all piled quickly into the other room to find that the misper was no longer missing – the Ambulance service had picked him up already and taken him to hospital. Relief was evident on many faces to hear that he was safe, and we all returned to finish our coffees and wind down. I learned a lot about search planning by watching the experienced search managers gather information and fill in the gaps, formulating plans and theories as the information flowed in. Much of this I can’t recount unfortunately as it would compromise the privacy of various people that we’d searched for as most of the learning points came from actual searches. It has however fired up even more of an interest in search managing in me.
I even managed to get to bed by 0300, so I had a reasonable night’s sleep. If only I could shake this cold…
So it’s mid-afternoon on Charles street, and noises outside attract our attention. A police van has pulled up to discuss appropriate behaviour with a group of Chavs. Drinks are poured down the drain, one or two seem to be detained.
Another day on Charles Street. Cheers, boys.