31 Aug 2009 : Another Busy Weekend

In what has been a busy period for the team and according to recent reports, all mountain rescue teams, Derby Mountain Rescue were called to three incidents over the bank holiday weekend.

The first callout was to search for a missing 39 year old despondent man on late Saturday afternoon in the Tansley area of Matlock. Police had called the team when phone signals had put the man in the Tansley area which is a rural location with many fields and wooded areas that had to be searched. Twenty nine rescuers and 4 search and rescue dogs searched for 6 hours but the operation was stood down as night fell and phone signals indicated the man was still on the move, possibly heading out o the search area.

The following day, the team were at a promotional and fundraising day at Dovedale when they received reports of an injured woman. The 44 year old woman had been descending a path down from Thorpe Cloud with her family when she slipped on wet rocks and injured her ankle. Team members treated her on scene before carrying her the rest of the way down and across the river on a specilaised stretcher to a waiting ambulance. She was then taken to the Royal Derby Hospital.

During the day, the team raised £447 from public donations and also dealt with several other minor incidents, including a lost boy and an asthmatic child who needed minor treatment.

On the Monday, the team were again called out to Dovedale to evacuate an injured walker who had slipped 80 feet down a path from Thorpe Cloud. The team were stood down whilst en route as the air ambulance managed to evacuate the casualty without ssistance.

This was the 9th callout that the team had dealt with in August and the 27th of the year, exceeding the total annual callouts for the previous 3 years. Nobody has been able to explain why Derby and most other rescue teams have witnessed a large increase in callouts this year but one popular theory is that the recession has brought many more people out to enjoy relatively cheap entertainments of the English and Welsh countryside.

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