Another Overstated Mendip Cave Rescue

[martinr]

professional emergency services personnel are getting paid regardless of whether they attend a rescue or not

Retained personnel are paid a fixed sum twice per year and then paid an additional sum for each call out

 

[The Old Ruminator]

old ruminator, I have read the latest bit to this thread as the 4 tenders being sent to assist a casualty from  cheddar gorge and not a cave. I believe chris  point was it seemed a proportionately high number for what could have been a low risk injury.

Got tangled up here. The original rescue at the start of the thread is what I referred too.

Anyway I still think it's daft. I certainly will not allow a rescue if I am involved. I would rather drag myself out with a broken arm . Oo. I have already done that. Its rather doubtful police , fire or ambulance crews will ever go down a cave. They then have to justify their presence by closing roads, setting up arc lights and generally annoying the local populace.

 

[Burt]

Avon & Somerset Search and rescue (mountain rescue to most people) technical rope team were called out to assist local fire and ambulance crews in the extraction of a lady who had fallen and broken an ankle. She was on a footpath up above Chelms Coombe quarry. When her exact location had been established a 4x4 was despatched from Avon & Somerset fire and Rescue, with a paramedic on board. The casualty was brought don to the road and transferred to a regular ambulance.

The above statement is fact. I was first on scene for ASSAR.

Whether you agree with the amount of resources used or not, that is up to you. But I am sure if you were the lady's husband, daughter, son or whatever, you would be hugely grateful for the emergency services we have at our disposal in this country and the service she received. If she had been injured in a cave I am sure MCR would have provided a similarly excellent service.

 

[mikem]

Bridgwater & Trowbridge are the rope rescue teams, the other 2 are local and do not have that training.

Mike

 

[Ian Ball]

The above statement is fact. I was first on scene for ASSAR.

 

[cap n chris]

Thanks for confirming the over-deployment, Ian, and providing an insight into what was required compared with what was mustered. Sounds like at least 75% wasn't required.

Pretty sure no-one is having a go at the emergency services at all, but merely taxpayer waste which appears to occur more often than not with these unusual types of rescues in our region. An FOI enquiry might pinpoint the sums involved.

 

[Cave_Troll]

is complaining about the number of 999 services responding to an incident another case of "they don't know what they're doing, it'd all be better if i was in charge because i know more about their job than they do" ?

 

[The Old Ruminator]

No CT. Its more about the bad publicity such events cause which seriously damages the reputation of caving.

 

[Cave_Troll]

sorry. some of the more recent posts seemed to be complaining about how that level of response could be justified given all the budget cuts etc

 

[The Old Ruminator]

A little bit right CT but its very hard to quantify the " cost " of anything regarding public services and army, navy etc. I guess most of the people would be on duty and being paid in any case. There also has to be the benefit of actually doing something from a training point of view. No the call out scenarios of late have been used by the media to hype the actions of the services whilst making cavers look like idiots. " Fire Brigade Rescues Cavers ". Nothing like a good rescue from the media point of view be it a cat, cow or a caver. All helpless individuals incapable of rescuing themselves. The other scenario, perhaps more problematical, will be the reluctance of cavers to initiate a call out knowing what sort of circus might descend on them. Knowing full well that police, fire or ambulance are never likely to enter a cave one must address the actual support and help they are to provide. Closing the road seems to be the initial reaction. At night come the arc lamps ( keeping the erstwhile natives awake ). I remember a caver going to help a rescue at Swildons had to follow the taped path down to the cave for heath and safety reasons.( Under arc lamps of course ).  I think gates were left open as well never mind all of the tyre tracks across the fields. Any landowner facing such an onslaught would be seriously wondering if cavers were more of a pest than not.

 

[mikem]

The number of personnel on site can be a problem - where a road has to be closed to safeguard the excess numbers, or there have been occasions where cave rescue can't get their vehicles near the site due to fire engines blocking access. Part of the problem is there are so few cave rescues nowadays that emergency staff don't know who is required & everyone ends up there!

 

[cap n chris]

Part of the problem is there are so few cave rescues nowadays that emergency staff don't know who is required & everyone ends up there!

Indeed, hence the 2nd post in this thread:

Maybe it's time we had a non-999 number for cave rescue, a number that goes to MRO not fire and rescue?

... let cave rescue determine the resource requirements, role and scheduling of ancillary emergency services. If Cave Rescue is 'done' by cavers then they are in charge after all, aren't they? Perhaps therein lies the issue.....

 

[andrewmcleod]

... let cave rescue determine the resource requirements, role and scheduling of ancillary emergency services. If Cave Rescue is 'done' by cavers then they are in charge after all, aren't they? Perhaps therein lies the issue.....

I was under the impression that the police were always in 'charge', as the statutory body with the responsibility. Years of demonstrating themselves to be competent and effective organizations means that the police allow volunteer cave rescue bodies to have a go at rescuing people, and generally with excellent success. However, if they do screw up the buck will almost certainly stop at the police's door (or the fire service where appropriate)...

My understanding is that cave rescue (locally and nationally) works very hard to make sure that they operate within the standards of emergency bodies around the UK, working to a common set of skills that can be delivered to the police and other statutory bodies. I think this is a good thing; if a CR team refused to work with any external agency, or demanded complete control of a rescue against the wishes of the statutory bodies, I would completely understand the statutory bodies choosing not to make use of such a (hypothetical) rogue CR team and instead building (at probably considerable cost for poorer outcomes) their own internal capacity.

If the UK had funded, statutory, professional cave rescue teams with legal accountability and responsibility for rescue, then clearly they could be 'in charge'. When CR teams are just doing (excellent, life-saving, crucial) voluntary work for the statutory bodies, I don't believe they should ever be 'in charge'. Instead they should carry on doing what they have always been doing - clearly demonstrating their skills and abilities to work independently and with external agencies to organize and carry out effective cave rescues, allowing external agencies to trust their skills and judgements.

If the fire service want to turn up with 9 fire engines, 6 boats, a dog search and rescue team, 3 water bowsers and whatever else to a cave rescue, it's all a bit silly and taxpayers have every right to question whether this is a valid use of limited resources. I don't think Cave Rescue should have some power to forbid it though (certainly they can complain, though, if it impedes a rescue).

PS there will always be times people (on both sides) get the balance wrong.

 

[alastairgott]

Maybe it's time we had a non-999 number for cave rescue, a number that goes to MRO not fire and rescue?

... let cave rescue determine the resource requirements, role and scheduling of ancillary emergency services. If Cave Rescue is 'done' by cavers then they are in charge after all, aren't they? Perhaps therein lies the issue.....

Really difficult though, The problem is the call handlers not knowing where to put the call.
If there were a number that only cavers knew to get straight to Cave rescue, then the call handlers wouldn't see half the volumes of calls they do now. And therefore would be further out of practice?

If, for example, there were need for a missing persons search team to be sent out. and one area they wanted to search was "the caves of mendip hills", then they would find it difficult to progress a meaningful search without the cave rescue.

I don't know how to solve the conundrum though.

 

[Fulk]

I believe that as things stand, if the police call out a cave rescue team then the team members are covered by some sort of police insurance policy (though I have no idea what it covers), but if, say, members of a team heard about somebody in trouble and set off to rescue them without being called out by the police, then they would not be covered by the police insurance. I guess that's a factor to consider.

 

[cap n chris]

I believe that as things stand, if the police call out a cave rescue team then the team members are covered by some sort of police insurance policy (though I have no idea what it covers), but if, say, members of a team heard about somebody in trouble and set off to rescue them without being called out by the police, then they would not be covered by the police insurance. I guess that's a factor to consider.

Response No.21 from Page 1 of this thread:

Indeed. But the appropriate insurance can be kicked in to cover the cave rescue after the event has commenced, without the circus swarm of unnecessary mainstream emergency services arriving on scene first. By all means have F&R turn up to assist with pumping out flood water, and an ambulance crew being there to convey any casualty(ies) to hospital once they are extracted to surface, but let's have Cave Rescue on scene right from the outset, calling the shots, and overseeing the whole theatre.

Therefore, having a number to alert Cave Rescue without using 999 (which is the villain of the piece, apparently) should work perfectly.

 

[paul]

Maybe it's time we had a non-999 number for cave rescue, a number that goes to MRO not fire and rescue?

... let cave rescue determine the resource requirements, role and scheduling of ancillary emergency services. If Cave Rescue is 'done' by cavers then they are in charge after all, aren't they? Perhaps therein lies the issue.....

Really difficult though, The problem is the call handlers not knowing where to put the call.
If there were a number that only cavers knew to get straight to Cave rescue, then the call handlers wouldn't see half the volumes of calls they do now. And therefore would be further out of practice?

If, for example, there were need for a missing persons search team to be sent out. and one area they wanted to search was "the caves of mendip hills", then they would find it difficult to progress a meaningful search without the cave rescue.

I don't know how to solve the conundrum though.

Currently calls for Cave Rescue (and Mountain Rescue) got though the emergency number 999 (or 112) for a reason. See http://www.caverescue.org.uk/about-cave-rescue/how-cave-rescue-works/ for more information.

 

[andrewmcleod]

I believe that as things stand, if the police call out a cave rescue team then the team members are covered by some sort of police insurance policy (though I have no idea what it covers), but if, say, members of a team heard about somebody in trouble and set off to rescue them without being called out by the police, then they would not be covered by the police insurance. I guess that's a factor to consider.

It is not unknown for Cave Rescue to, having independently discovered a rescue is necessary, phone the police to get the appropriate number, make it an official call-out and thus get insurance.

That said it is much better that there is a single point of contact through the police, automatically starting a formal rescue process and then making calls to the current (up-to-date) list of Cave Rescue controllers/wardens than individual cavers start phoning random controllers off a list, who would just have to phone the police anyway to start a callout.

One thing you _could_ do is fund a permanent 24 hour 'cave rescue' 999 phone handler service (you would probably only need one person at a time) who worked with the police to arrange callouts. Almost certainly a massive waste of money; it might help prevent _some_ unnecessary external agency assistance but the Fire Service can still turn up on their own if they want (and are paying attention to current events).

 

[alastairgott]

One thing you _could_ do is fund a permanent 24 hour 'cave rescue' 999 phone handler service (you would probably only need one person at a time) who worked with the police to arrange callouts. Almost certainly a massive waste of money; it might help prevent _some_ unnecessary external agency assistance but the Fire Service can still turn up on their own if they want (and are paying attention to current events).

This already happens, follow me numbers are used by controllers to receive incoming cave rescue calls.
It just relies on the call being put through to the number when the time comes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Find_me/follow_me

 

[JJ]

For a large proportion of the UK callouts to Mountain and Cave rescue are now handled by the Sarcall system after a 999 call. In no way can I speak for the Mendip region, but in northern UK it is used by all Police Forces, Ambulance Services, Helimeds etc. along with all MRT's and CRO's. I think it is fair to say that it has led to far earlier situational awareness of incidents and the better tasking of appropriate resources.