Support Northumberland NP Mountain Rescue Team

Aim

Northumberland NP Mountain Rescue Team are raising funds for incident management, supporting the emergency services through COVID-19.

Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team is grateful for your support in staying at home to protect the NHS through the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst our volunteers have not been called out to any hill related incidents since the lock down, we have continued to assist Northumbria Police in searching for those who are suffering from dementia or mental health issues, and have assisted Northumberland and Tyne & Wear Fire & Rescue Service in tackling wild fires.

Supporting You and Your Loved Ones
Last year the Team responded to 83 incidents, helping 90 people. This year we have already responded to 72 incidents, and it's only July! These include both urban and rural searches and rescues. NNPMRT has a specialist water team for rescues in or near water, as well as search dogs and drones. We offer resilience support for flooding and snow bound motorists, and are able to assist rescues in difficult to access areas. The Team has 41 volunteer members ready to respond 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to call outs, as well as 4 trainee members training to join the Team.

Vehicle and Technical Support
The team owns two Land Rovers and a control trailer, which are based at Pegswood Fire Station, and one Toyota Hilux, which is based at the ambulance station in Rothbury. Each of these vehicles is available 24/7 to respond to incidents and they must be kept well-maintained, with iPads and laptops with mobile data, and trackers to track Team members, to be able to respond to emergencies and provide a life-saving service.

How is The Team Activated?
You can call Mountain Rescue by dialing 999, asking for the Police, then requesting Mountain Rescue. The emergency services may request our services to help them, by speaking to our controllers. The Team is then activated through a system called SARCALL, which is also used to manage an incident and share information with the Calling Authority (also using MX SARMAN).

Locating Casualties and Team Members
We are able to locate an individual (using systems such as PhoneFind) and safeguard our Team members by tracking them using technology such as SPOT trackers, GPS-enabled radios, Viewranger BuddyBeacon, and MRMap). All of the above technology requires access to the internet by means of mobile data subscriptions to work effectively. The Team also has 7 trained drone pilots, a search dog and one trainee search dog.

We rely entirely on donations
Each year the Team has to raise £40,000 in operating costs through fundraising, grants and securing donations. The Team is run entirely by volunteers. We have recently appointed a fundraising officer and set up a support team to assist with funding (all of whom are volunteers). The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the cancellation of summer fundraising events and many collection tins have been locked behind closed doors of cafes and shops, so we really need your support to meet our operating costs at the moment.

Supporting the Emergency Services
NNPMRT is called out by Northumbria Police, the North East Ambulance Service and Northumberland Fire & Rescue Service to support the entire community of Northumberland and Tyne & Wear, an area measuring approximately 5000 square kilometres, with a population of over 350,000.

How has the COVID-19 Pandemic affected the Team?
All of the Team's fundraising events from the start of lock down have been cancelled, with a loss of income of around £15,000.
The Team has moved the vast majority of it's training online, with only training in the wearing of PPE and operating within COVID-19 protocols happening face to face. This has been done in training bubbles so that if anyone tests positive it does not mean that the whole Team is out of action.
Social distancing can be challenging when responding to incidents, and when we need to be within 2m of each other or a casualty, we need to wear PPE including full waterproofs, goggles, surgical masks and two sets of nitrile gloves. When dealing with airways we will also wear coveralls and FFP3 masks.
We can no longer share transport, increasing fuel bills, and we restrict numbers in Team vehicles to two Team members - a driver and navigator. This increases the number of vehicles used.
All equipment used at an incident needs to be thoroughly sanitised and quarantined after use, and all Team members will need to remove all clothing and change before returning to work or home. All masks and gloves used are put into clinical waste bags and disposed of, and new masks and gloves put into Team members' kit bags.
If any casualty or Team member tests positive all Team members present would be required under Track and Trace to quarantine themselves.

How will your donations and a grant from Calor be spent?
Being awarded a £5,000 grant from Calor would allow The Team to renew it's SPOT tracker subscription for a year, and to cover the costs of mobile data for the incident controllers, both allowing us to use technology to track Team members and Team vehicles, and to manage incidents on laptops and tablets, co-ordinating resources and working closely with the other emergency services. It will also allow us to ensure that the Team vehicles are well-maintained.

Any extra money that we have raised will help the Team cover it's core costs which are usually covered by fundraising events in the summer months which have all been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These include insurances, medical equipment, PPE, technical kit that needs replacing due to wear and tear (e.g. ropes, harnesses, stretcher accessories, slings, helmets), and vehicle equipment that needs replacing after use (e.g. body bags and smoke flares). The Team is also raising funds for search torches, head torches and base layers. 

Incidents This Week

The Team have had a very busy few days, with three incidents in less than three days with an injured walker, an injured teenage mountain biker and a search for a high risk missing person (fortunately found safe and well). Your support in helping us helping these people is hugely appreciated, and can help save lives.

This project successfully funded on 16th July 2020