patrick halloran: When most people think of rescue, they picture flashing lights, fire trucks, and full-time responders rushing to an emergency. What if I told you some of most capable rescue teams in the world don't get paid a dime? Tonight, we're crossing the Atlantic to explore a rescue culture built entirely on volunteers. A world where ordinary people leave family dinners, walk away from their daily jobs, and answer the call at all hours to search for the missing, rescue the injured, and help communities through some of their darkest moments. Our guest has spent more than 25 years in mountain rescue. served on multiple rescue teams during his career in the Royal Air Force, and helped lead one of the largest flood rescue operations in recent British history during the devastating York floods of 2015. From remote searches of the North York moors to large-scale disaster response, we're diving into what it takes to build and sustain a rescue team when every responder is a volunteer. This is a story about service, sacrifice, leadership, and why some people continue answering the pager long after most would have hung it up. I'm PJ Halloran, and this is the Rescue Lab. Hey, welcome to the rescue lab podcast. I'm PJ Halloran. We've got a great episode today from across the pond with our friend Roger Hartley from the Scarborough and Rydale Mountain Rescue team. And Roger, why don't we just start off, why don't you give us a quick background about, you know, your, your history in search and rescue, where you started and how you ended up at Scarborough and Rydale. Okay. So I, I set off, ⁓ probably when I was about 20 year old, I was in the Royal Air Force. And I joined the RAF Mountain Rescue team. So I was on a team that looks after the Midlands of the country. So there's a range of hills throughout the middle of England up towards Scotland. And we looked after that sort of area and across to North Wales. And then shortly after I got posted down to South Wales, I was on the Mountain Rescue team there. And then I came away from Mountain Rescue a little bit when I got married and settled down. got myself and the family going and then I joined this team where I am now and I've been on this team about 20. And what was search and rescue like in the Royal Air Force? Okay, so it's probably a lot more professional and I don't mean that in training wise or anything, but just in everything was paid for. So I knew a part of the Air Force and nothing was too much trouble to go anywhere, do anything. So the RAF Mount and Rescue have climbed Everest. They've done all sorts of things, really out there things. they've, because money's no object, they could go anywhere in the world basically. It was just really easy to do that sort of stuff. Yeah, and what does the training look like on that end when you get into that side? What is the specific training that they deal with? Okay, so the RAF would take you from zero all the way up. as far as we want to go. They would go, so we went out every weekend training for two nights, two days, two nights, two days. So we'd go out Friday, come back Sunday. And then we would have like holidays over Christmas and New Year. We'd go to Scotland, winter ice climbing. During the summer we'd go down Cornwall, Seacliffe climbing. And we would go walking and we would regularly, easily do 20 mile a day over mountains and hills, just yomping away basically, getting fit. So it was like I said, it was no object to get time off work or anything. So when I was on the Stafford team in the Midlands, I was a part-time team member. I did my job, I was a mechanic and looked after the ground support equipment on the Air Force base. At the weekends I would go out with the Mount Rescue team. If we get called out, I would go out with the Mount Rescue team. When I went down to South Wales, I was full-time Mount Rescue. That's all I did. I didn't do anything else. Was there any memorable calls from your RAF time in search and rescue? In other words, two or three really memorable ones. So obviously we were there in case planes crashed in the hills to get the pilots out or recover the bodies or whatever. Yeah. and I had a couple of them to do. Obviously back in the 70s when I was in Mount rescue in the RAF, the RAF was a lot bigger than it is now and there were a lot more planes flying around and just by percentage you get a lot more crashes and accidents and that sort of thing so there a lot more to go to. But one of the memorable ones I went to and it was probably the call out that's upset me the most in my life was there was a civilian plane we went to in South Wales and It was a little four-seater Cessna. were a pilot and a co-pilot in the front and there were two women in the back. I assumed it was two couples. And they were going back to Ireland and they left the airport in South Wales and it was a bit foggy and misty and everything and they hit the hill. And everybody had died on impact. But the thing that upset me the most was we got the bodies out and we helicoptered them out of there. And the last female we got out of the back. half her fingernails were painted and the nail varnished in the bottom of the plane. And I thought to myself, and because I could put a story around it and fit her and make it human, it played on my mind for quite a while, did that. And I resolved never to do that again. So I try not to, you you treat everybody with dignity and respect, but I try not to get emotionally involved with it because I know what happens if you do. Yeah, no, I think I'm sure that was a learning lesson very early on. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah. It was one of the first airplane crashes I went to, to be honest. So was quite a big, I mean, I went to, I've been to jet crashes where the jets plowed into the ground and it's like spread over three or four fields. And it's just, you know, to be honest, doesn't really bother me that much. Yeah. No, it's when you put that human side to it. I totally understand. So you got out of that. Now you're, you're with the Scarborough and Ryder Delmont rescue team. So For firefighters, first responders here in the United States, we have our SAR teams, but in England and Wales, what is the role of the Mountain Rescue team and where do they sort of fit into the emergency response system? So they're a voluntary service. So everything that happens in Mountain Rescue in England and Wales is voluntary. Not one person gets paid a penny for anything you do. But we respond to the police and the ambulance service. An emergency call from a member of the public would typically go into either the police or the ambulance service. We get two types of calls. We get missing people that we go look for, or we get injured people that we know where they are, but the ambulance service can't get to them because they're in inaccessible places. So we would typically either go get them out of the inaccessible place or if it was somebody lost, we'd sort of search out and get, you know, gather around and organize the search. Relative. you work, you integrate in with the nine one one system and adjunct and work with them. Yeah. Yeah, basically. Yeah. So, mean, it's a nine nine nine system here, but right. Nine nine nine. That's right. ⁓ and so this team, the Scarborough and Riteo Mountain Rescue team started in 1965 and I think you said there was about 10 calls a year and now you're up to like 60 or 70. So what do you think has changed over those decades? Well, communication is a lot easier now. So if you can imagine back in the sixties, you would go out and get lost. Nobody would know you were lost until you didn't turn up for your team. And then it would have to be a big, well, where could it possibly be? And there'd be loads of investigations to do before you actually went out and tried to look for somebody. Now everybody's carrying a phone around with them. And so the minute somebody doesn't know where they are, they're on the phone. ⁓ You know, and quite often. Sometimes they would get themselves out of it if they had the courage to just get on a little bit or try it, you know, but I don't know whether everybody's so risk-averse now that they just don't want to chance it. For missing people, that's the thing. The other thing is for injured people, so if you twisted your ankle back in the 60s, you pretty much shrugged your shoulders and got on with it because that was the only way you were getting off. Right. Nowadays you can phone somebody up and they'll come and rescue you. And I think that's a lot. good or bad, I'm not sure. No, I mean, I think that's, that's exactly it. It's, it's that instantaneous, hey, I'm lost. Come get me. You know, people just, they expect it. I guess they kind of expect it maybe in a, in a certain way. Yeah. I guess that's good for the, that's good for the team. That's good for call outs, right? It's good for call out numbers and it's good for, it's good for training and practice and that sort of thing. We don't mind going. Yeah, of course. And you talked about the volunteer side. As volunteers, what does the training look like and how do you keep people committed? Okay. So we have 10 basic modules that you can go through without just reeling them all off. There things like how to operate the radios. Now they all work and go together. That's one module. Navigation would be another module. Rope work. them sort of things. They all fit like that. You have to be current. So we get assessed on them every so often. know, some things like BLS is every year. Some of the modules every three years depends on how we think, you know, much training or assessment people need. if don't mind me asking, who does the assessments on the team? So it's all peer assessed. So we assess each other. know, the people who are qualified. I mean, we do have paramedics in the team and things like that who have joined and they'll invariably do the BLS and things like that because it's their fault. But things like navigation, we will peer assess each other. We'll go for night exercises and we'll go walking across the moors and we'll have to find tiny little things. know, eight and 10 figure grid references are typical of what we're looking for, which is like to us that is a one square meter in a 25 mile Square Heather Merlin. it's, you know, we are, we've got to be spot on with the navigation. So, that is probably, that's probably one of the biggest training things nowadays. Yes. Yes. Especially, I mean, those, those core skills and not having to rely on technology. Well, the only thing with technology is is great. And we all, we all sort of have a sneak look at our phone if we do, you know, we're not 100 % sure. And I'm sure you guys do exactly the same, but one day the battery won't work or you'll be out of signal or something will happen and you'll have to go back to the map and compass. And if that skill isn't knife sharp, then you're going to be stuck. Yeah. just, you're just bringing back terrible memories of me when I was back in the army in the middle of the night being on the land, of course, you know, the red light out on the map and just trying to figure out where the heck I was. I buried that down deep inside. ⁓ As ⁓ far as the public perception of the team, what do think the public in your area often misunderstands about what the Mount Rescue teams can actually do? Yeah, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. And it's a continual battle I've had personally, because I've been the chairman of our team, I've been the secretary, I've held quite a few roles in the management of the team. And every time we interact with the public, one of the biggest questions is why do we need a marked rescue team? Because we're not in the Himalayas and we're not all stood at the bottom of huge mountain, they think we don't need you. But we try to explain to them that when an ambulance turns up, when you break your leg on the hill and an ambulance turns up at the side of the road and they say, well, we can't get to you. And the cartoon image everybody has of two people carrying a stretch chair. isn't reality. You cannot do that for more than a couple of yards before you're back down on the floor and something else has got to happen. So invariably we get called to get them to the ambulance basically. And so you're talking about interfacing with the public. How much, the teams all run on donations, is that how it's funded? Yeah. So we raise all the money ourselves. anything, I mean, we get legacies, we get money left when people pass away. Which is great. You know, it saves us no end of, because to be honest, for our team, it's about 60,000 a year to run. And that's just, that's just maintain the team as it is with fuel prices and replacing kits. And we have a winter skills trip where we go up to Scotland every, every February and do snow and ice work. Just so we're capable, we have that capability. It all comes from money. I'm sure the vast majority of the public in our country, I don't know about yours, they have this image of, it's just a few blokes. They all get together. They put a big thick woolly jumper on, go rescue somebody. all, it's just not, it's not like that. Until it's them that sprain their ankle up there and they want you to come get them. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's definitely a fact. You talked a little bit about some of the training earlier on. For new members to come on the team, I think you said it takes about six to nine months to get that person trained up and up to 18 months to become a full operational member. So what is, you you talked about those modules, but what is it that you try and instill in those people in that timeframe and who are the people that are joining? ⁓ surprisingly, the walk of life, we pretty much get a cross section of society. really do. But the things that we have to instill in them more than anything is. You're relying on your team members. So that is the biggest thing. We all have to be as one. The training, you need to be proficient in the training and you need to be able to rely on the people next to you and they need to be able to rely on you. And that's built over time. It wouldn't matter how trained somebody was when they came to us. They wouldn't get on the call out list straight away until that relationship's built up with the rest of the team, basically. the way we do it so they will go through that training and so we think they're proficient in everything they need to be proficient in. They'll go on the call out list and we want to see them turn up at call outs at three o'clock in the morning and see how happy they are at that. Well it's just the way it works. And at the end of that, the team will vote them on. So the team votes them on. If they've fallen out with a life's of the team, they're not getting on anyway. It wouldn't matter how good they were. So it is just the way we work it. there a common reason why candidates fail to make it through the process at all that you've seen? The biggest reason that people don't make it, and it's the same every time, is they don't realize the commitment they have to put into it. So they all think it's going for a walk on the hill. You know, and they'll see a lovely sunny day and they think, ⁓ I like and do that. You know, I've got a free day once a month. can pop along and have a walk on the hill with these guys. And, know, until they see that the training you have to put in to get your skills up to be competent. Yeah. That's the problem. then it slowly dawns on them over the first six months that actually this is a lot of work. And on that nice walk, they're carrying a huge kit of gear with them and they didn't realize that too. Yeah, there's all that. And when you're teaching the candidates, what do you find is the hardest skill to teach them out of those modules? I don't know. I see some candidates that find some of the modules really easy and other ones really hard, and I struggle to see what they're seeing hard in it. And then other candidates will be exactly the opposite. I think you've got to teach people to work as part of a team. That is the most important thing. I can teach you navigation. can teach you rope work. I can teach you whatever it is you need to know. But if you don't work as part of a team, I can't teach you that. It's those interpersonal skills. That has to be in you that do you know, wanting to turn up. mean, like I say, I've been on the team 25 years and when the, when my alerted goes off at three in the morning, I get, I get mad with myself if I can't go because I think I'm letting them down. course. Yes. And that's what you can't teach people. If they haven't got that in them and they're happy just to see everybody else go and they stay in bed, then that's not the attitude that we're using at you. You can't teach that. That's just an innate skill that brings, that's exactly, that brings a team together. Those interpersonal skills that gel a team together. And that's been, I think that's a common, that's just a common thread amongst these conversations is that. Some of the most important aspects of the rescue side is just the team dynamic. But if you had to, if there was only three things that you could, that you could train a probationary candidate on, what do you think they'd be besides the building in that interpersonal dynamic? What are a couple of core things that you want to see out of those team members? I want to see them get involved straight away. I want to see them throw themselves to the front. The people that stand at the back. So, you know, we've done this 90 times. You teach a group. And there'll be two or three at the front and there'll be half a dozen at the back talking or just sat watching. And I don't want to see that because, know, again, when it's howling a gale and the rain's coming down sideways and I need a rope system set, you know, I don't want to use that at the back waiting to be told what to do. I want you jumping in the front and thinking that we need, we all need to get on this and get out of here. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest thing. And to be honest, Mostly they weed themselves out anyway, you know, over that six, nine month period, get very few come on the call out list that are still hanging back. know, because by then it's clicked and they know what it's about. And if they're not really up for it, then they're not coming to the call outs because that's inconvenient. Of course, at 3am. You never get call outs at a convenient time. It's always when your tea's just being put on the table or you just tucked yourself into bed or it's two in the morning or whatever. That's a life lesson. Exactly. Exactly. If you're not getting up and going Zen. You're never going to go. How hard is that? Or what do you teach for rope skills to the candidates? What are they expected to know for rope skills? So when they come to us, they're not expected to know anything. What we teach them. is we have this like 100 % redundancy systems, whatever we're operating with, there should be another backup system that could jump in if that system fails. we run twin ropes down to stretchers. If we're bringing a stretcher vertically up a crag face or whatever, we will run twin ropes through them and everything is backed up by something else. Right. So And these are not complicated systems really, but if you stumble across this system, it looks complicated until you break it down into its individual little bits. And it takes quite a bit of time for people to get confident in that. Now I'm quite lucky and I had all that experience in the RAF and we did a lot of training on ropes. you know, days and days and days of training until you could do it blindfold, basically. I mean, I can still tie all the knots I need behind me back, but I just, I don't need to see them. That's a good pub trick actually. I can see it in my mind. I can see the knot in my mind and how it works. So I don't need to see the rope really. And the biggest thing is to teach people to be confident in what they're doing. So I find that for quite a long while after, you know, you can say to people, go set me a belay system up there and they'll go set it up, but then they'll want you to go check it. Although, I know we always get somebody to check to the system anyway before it goes live, but they don't have confidence in themselves for hell of a long while. And if you could give people confidence, that'd be the thing to them. That makes sense. So in that same sense, know, when you're working on the team, what separates a good team searcher versus a great one? What is it about the individual, maybe their skill sets? So, yeah. So we have two sort of ways we search. If we're searching, we do corridor searches, which is like searching down a footpath or searching along the edge of a field or something like that, where it's a narrow width. Or we have sweep searches where we're all in a long line together or walking together. And if I could get everybody to walk at the same pace, I'd be a million. I would be a millionaire, I would. That is the biggest thing. And to get people to search as part of a team and not search as for individuals is the biggest thing. That is the biggest thing. So you have to be able to see all the ground between you and the person next to you. people, they will continually search like they're the only person searching. So they'll see as far as they can see, but not necessarily making sure they're covering all the ground between you and the person next to you. And that's the biggest thing. turn around and look backwards every now and then. That's a good point. Always check behind you. like that. Yeah. For things sat behind trees and things like that. That's, yeah, no, exactly. think that's, I think that's often a very overlooked, just simple thing right in front of you and right behind you. And when you pass something by that's, that's a smart piece. We talked earlier about, you know, technology side and in search and rescue, know, where have you. How have you seen that change over the course of time? And not only the RAF, but on the mountain rescue team as well. Well, obviously we have things like maestros and IDs and things like that and these self locking belay devices, which are great. And I can remember belaying stretches on figure of eight really, and just making sure people hung onto the rope. There is a lot more safety involved in it and it is a lot more professional service than it was. In general, even from the 70s in the RAF, wasn't as professional as Mount and Rescue is now in Civil Street, the way we are here. Because of health and safety and whatever and all the technology that's come with it, we have... We are a lot more professional service and we're expected to be a lot more professional as well. The expectation is that when we turn up, the professionals have turned up. So we need to make sure we're better than anybody else there. Otherwise we're going to get found out very quickly. Yes, absolutely. And especially if you are soliciting donations to keep that team going and you have to show that level of professionalism. When you guys are out searching, if you are searching for a lost person or you're out in the woods, what is your go-to as far as a GPS? Is there a certain app that you use to help find your way? So the way we organize the searches, the way we personally do it, because we have quite a large area to cover, we have an operations vehicle that has got computers and computer mapping and all that sort of gear in it. We all carry radios that will get us back to that vehicle and the radios the GPS enabled so that they keep updating our position all the time. So in the control vehicle they have a map open on the computer and they can see where the radios are all the time so they know where we are and where we've searched and where we've been basically. Interesting. Yeah so typically the four of us each hill party will get given a search area and when that hill party goes to that search area They're in charge of that area then. So the owners changes a little bit from the control vehicle to that party. And if they find anything in that area, they're in charge of that incident, basically. So the control vehicle then just becomes like a conduit for messages and for getting equipment to them or whatever it is they need. And you mentioned, you keep mentioning four people. Is that the size of a team that goes out when you're on a search? That's a search party. towards us as search party. So you have a party leader, a medic, you have a navigator and you have a radioman. And basically that's how it works. And if you find an injured person, the medic goes in first, normally the radioman sorts out a message back to control, then he will typically hand the radio to the party leader, he'll go in and help the medic. So there's two of them dealing with a casualty. The navigator will get an accurate location for really an eight figure grid reference, 10 figure grid reference, whatever. And you'll need to know things like which side of the river you are, know, river left or river right. Cause a good reference can be either side of a river. And if you're, if all the parties help you turn up on the wrong side of the river and they can't get across it, then you're just waving at each other. Basically you're not helping anyway. you're saying hello. when you actually find that injured person, what? Are there any other resources that are available to you or is it you guys that are going to get that injured person out? Or are you able to call a helicopter? Is there anything else in play? are helicopters we can call and there's an air ambulance that We could get to some incidents, so they won't come to you if you're in forests, if you're in deep gullies, things like that. They will come to them because it's a little light aircraft and the people on the aircraft aren't really geared up for being on the end of ropes, getting lowered down into things, whatever. So they typically wouldn't come to that. The big Coast Guard helicopters we have on rare occasions will come and winch people out of things. I've had them winch people out for me, but... Generally speaking, they won't come because their priority is anybody out at sea. And so we're a land-based rescue service and they think, well, they'll still be there in an hour. If somebody wants help out at sea, they want it now. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. I'll give them that. You know, if we asked for helicopters and I've done this in the past, we still have to make a plan of how we're going to get them out of there without the helicopter, just in case it doesn't come. And it quite often doesn't come. It more often doesn't come. Yeah, it's a good idea in theory, I guess. Yeah. You always cross your fingers, but yeah. Living rules. Yeah. So when you arrive at the scene of a missing person, a call up for a missing person, what are the first things that you're thinking about and getting across to the team? Well, the first thing I'm going to do is get as much information as I can from the reporting person or the police or whatever. So I want to know what that person's got with them. Are they geared up to go missing? Do they have tents? Do they have sleeping bags? Are they on drugs? Do they need medication? You know, are they despondent? Have they left notes? Have they got the phone and money with them? Or have they walked out and left everything at home? You know, all these will set different bells ringing in my head as to what I think the scenario is. So we in Britain, I think you probably have access to it. We have a thing called the Grampian Stats where what happened in the past is all the missing people, all the stats about where they were found, what condition they were in, know, the leading up to it have been put into a booklet that we can go look at and think, right, he's an older person, he's suffering dementia, he's gone missing, he hasn't got money with him, typically he's going to be lost, he's going to walk up to a hedge and then stand there or walk up and down the hedge or whatever and that's where we're going to end up finding him. So that, that sort of scans out a plan for us basically. And then we just, as many people turn up, we make them into Hill parties and send them out basically. Okay. And how many people typically show up to a call out from the team? 20 say. That's probably, that would probably be an average five. So there are about 40 operational team members. And we think if we get half of them to a call out, that'll be, you know, we could affect a reasonable rescue involving ropes with 20 people. We could send, you know, four search parties out of a couple of drivers and a couple of incident controllers running the job basically. So you brought up a point. My next point was the incident controller. What is the role of the incident controller in the team? How does that work? In the past, he would have been called the team leader. Okay. So operationally, they're in charge of the call outs. So the way we work it in our team, we have nine incident controllers and there will be three on each week. So we rotate them around every week. So you will be IC1 once every nine weeks. And then in three weeks time, you'll be IC3 and then in another three weeks time, you'll be IC2 and then you're back to IC1 again. That way, you know, when you've only got one team leader, it's his responsibility all the time. And that's a massive responsibility in this day and age. You know, we're not dealing with five or 10 call outs anymore. We're typically getting two a week, or know, least one and a half, two a week. And your wife's going to get sick of you, you know, dropping the shopping in the shop and walking out or leaving your dinner or whatever. just to ease the burden on everybody, we spread the load a bit like that. And it's resilience. you know, the team leader goes down, who jumps in then? Exactly. No, that's a good point. rotating that leadership around keeps and it keeps that the leadership fresh in the new perspective in as well. Yeah. And you know, have, we have skilled people that can back you up all the time. So if you're in a, you know, I've had this myself where we've come to difficult rescues and I've thought I've questioned what I'm going to do. And I thought, well, I'm going to run this past him. We're going to have a couple of minutes chat. know, if I'm thinking on the right page here, or if I've seen this all wrong, And if he's coming at me with something else, it makes it a lot smoother. I think that's, that's the best part of working with a rescue team is the ability to think tank like that. just, you can rely, you know, talked about building interdependent teams, but the ability to rely on those other members to, set even the leader straight is, ⁓ is important. So in that, in, that incident command controller position, have you ever had to make a difficult decision? And you, know, there wasn't a perfect answer. Well, yeah, a couple actually, but on rescues. we always, and I'm sure you guys are the same, when you're training for rope rescues, everything is maximum safety dependent. then you, normally it will be a planned training exercise and it will all be very clean. It's a bit like what they call carpet CPR. You know when you go do your BLS and you're all in a room and it's a lovely carpet and we all kneel down, it's comfy. And then the next time you have to do it, it's all boulders and rocks and the guys lead like this and you're thinking, the hell am going to do this? So I've had a couple like that. I turned up to one guy that had fallen 40 foot down a grass bank and he'd landed between two boulders and he was wedged in between two boulders. So when we got the call, we got the call from the ambulance service to say that some guy had dislocated his knee and would we go rescue him? This was the location. And he was quite near to where I live. So I toodled off in my car to go find him. And I mean, I wasn't particularly worried about it. I thought I dislocated knee and it was a lovely day. thought he'll sit there for an hour until I get there, whatever. I'm not panicking like. When I got there, like I say, come almost virtually 40 foot. and he got wedged between and he was an oldie spoke he was about 80 and I did a primary survey on him and every bone I took was broken. ⁓ my god. Literally the law and I thought and I thought well how we're gonna get him out of here I don't know but this is not the living room carpet you know this is gonna this isn't gonna be textbook to get him out of here but yeah you know there's nobody else coming we have to solve it. There's no one else coming. That's exactly. And I do appreciate the fact that you guys get totally messed up dispatch calls the same as we do. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The dislocated me. So we used to have the policy that we would only travel on blue lights if we, if we thought it was desperate, but that was the incident that for us changed it. Every time we get called by the ambulance service, we go on blue lights because we don't know what we're going to until we get there. We don't go on blue lights for searches because we don't know where the guy is, you know, and we're going to be an hour planning it anyway before we're not rushing people out on the hill. need to make sure we're putting them in the right area. there's no blue lights aren't going to save you much on that. It's, I don't know what it's like in where you are, but round here, I can travel 40 mile on blue lights and save three minutes. Yeah, no, I think that's the same. Yeah, you we're not really we're not really going anywhere. So also wait, you'd left me hanging. How did you get the the 80 year old guy out of the wedge situation? So we have a thing called a vacuum mattress. So I don't know if you've got them over there. So what it is, is essentially it's a sheet, a double, double sheet, and it's got polystyrene beads inside it. And we can wrap the casualty around it, all the air out of it. So it goes rigid. And that's got I thought, well, the only thing I thought we could do was If we laid it flat and sucked all the air out, so it was like a board basically, and we slipped this down between him and the boulders at the back and then four or five of us reached under him, grabbed this vacuum mattress and pulled him and the vacuum mattress out at the same time. So he laid back on that and that's what we did. That's how we got him out. That's a job. I'm going to have to Google this vacuum mattress. This sounds very interesting. Is that a, is that a piece of kit you often use or is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anybody's got. potentially spinal injuries or as odd any sort of mechanism of injury would make you worry about their neck or anything like that would go in a vacuum mattress. Okay. And there's their amazing bits of care. Amazing bits of care. So what they do is they get rid of the need for a collar. So I don't know if you use the vital collars. Do you use the vital collars? Just the cervical collar? Yeah. Yes. Yes. So they in, in Britain, there's quite a bit of a question about how much good they actually do. think that's, I don't think that's, I don't think that's a British thing. I think our own protocols have sort of backed off the use of them in a certain sense. So vacuum matches get rid of the need for that altogether. And you've got them solid. It will form around the head so they can't move the head. They can't move the whole body. It's basically in there and that's the end of it. Okay. And you can, you can then strap that in a structure and do what you like with it. I learned something new today, so that's a win for me. On your call-outs, what are the types of technical rescues that you guys are actually conducting? What's a common tech rescue skill that you guys are using? So, yeah, I mean, we use ropes mostly just to get... So we have a lot of gullies where we are. Up on the Moors, we have a lot of gullies. But we're in a bit of an unusual area we are because all the access roads are on the top of the hills. Yeah. So anybody falls down anything, we've got to get them back up to the top, basically to get them out of there. And lots of little gullies like this. And so we use like double rope systems really. So is it a lot of, it's, I mean, it sounds like you guys do a lot of like low angle rescues then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, I mean, we do, we have one area around the waterfall that is quite popular with people and the waterfall must be must be 40 or 50 foot high. And that would be like a pterilean to get down to them and get them out. So we do train that and people go around the bottom of this waterfall and play around and run up and down. And one day somebody's going to fall over and break their neck or whatever. And that's when we'll be needed to get a pterilean involved to get them out of there. But that's quite a complicated rope system for us and is, is trained a lot and rarely used. Right. And what do you guys use for? ⁓ If you're doing these low angle rescues, do you use any sort of artificial high directionals? Do you have the vortex? Do you have the anything like that that you use? So we use have a larking frame. We use have a larking frame. Okay. Which is a bit, do you know what a larking frame is? You have seen them? I'd have to see a picture. mean, it's a bit of a triangular thing that rocks a bit like that. So the rope goes up through it and dangles down here. Yeah. You hang it over the edge and then you can rock it back when the stretch is up here and it brings the stretcher back in. So we used to have one of them. It's quite complicated to train a bit and the training burden was too much really for us for as often as we used it. So we decided that really we were better off without it. We could still operate in our areas and that's when one of the main areas was this waterfall, it's called Falling Foss was the waterfall and that's when we developed the Teraline for that because the Teraline was easier to use than the Larking Frame to be honest. It was easier to. And it sounds like a big piece of kit that you got to carry with you. Yeah, is. It's a massive piece of kit. And the places we go, there isn't always a road access. So you're carrying it in. Yeah. And to be honest, nobody wanted to carry it. I mean, they're all volunteers. Nobody's getting paid to do it. Exactly. I understand. As far as outside of your team, what do you think is a technical rescue skill that that teams don't practice enough, just in general. I would think if you're talking technical rescue with ropes, it all wants practice as much as possible because we never use it enough. In real life, we never use it. And people say to me when they join the team, why do we need to train on this? We hardly ever use it. Why do we need to train so much on it? That's exactly why. That's exactly the reason why, because the day you need it, you better be good at it. Yeah. And it never plays out like that. You can't make it up on the day you need it. No, that's a very fair point. Something I want to touch on, and you'd brought up before, was the York floods of 2015. Can you walk us through that and what happened, what that incident was all about? Yeah. So around York, I don't know if you know where York is in the British Isles, but it's like a major city, Northern England, yeah, in the middle of the country. And I think at one point, back in a lot of history, it used to be the capital city of England. I think it was quite, it is quite a major city. The Romans were there. So there's two rivers flow through this. So there's the Foss and the Ouse, the two rivers. Now the Ouse is a big river that flows around the outside of York, but the Foss is a smaller river that flows right through the middle of it. And what happens when it... when there's been a lot of rain up in the Dales, Yorkshire Dales, it all flows down the Ouse and it backflows up through the Foss and into the city and floods the city. So there is a barrier that they can put down that blocks the Foss off basically. So if you imagine like a garage door, an overhead garage door, normally it sits in that open position up there and they can lower it down like that so it stops the Foss so the Ouse goes past. And then they just pumped the fuss out there, got some massive pumps and pumped the water out until the ooze goes down, then they can open the barrier again. Yeah. So that's all well and good. So in 2015, there was some major flash rainstorms around that flooded. I mean, the grounds everywhere was saturated anyway through continual rain. But then they came these big rainstorms. The ooze, the level of ooze went up dramatically. So they lowered the barrier, but the pumps failed. So they were got water in the pumps and the pumps failed. So they had to make a decision. If they'd left the barrier down, York would have been flooded completely. If they lifted it up, bits of York were going to get flooded because the oomph was going to flow back. But they judged that would be less than leaving it down. So they lifted the barrier up and flooded York basically, to some extent. Now, I'm going to say there'd be a couple of thousand homes flooded. So it was quite a big thing and it was a because this is in the middle of a city and quite a big city it was lots and lots of panic people couldn't get to places they wanted to get people running all over the place so the police declared a major incident so as part of the local resilience forum we got called in to major incidents we get called into them now quite often there isn't anything much we can do because it's a police incident or something like that. But in this, we were sort of involved in the getting people out, the humanitarian getting people out of the houses if they wanted to get out. So the fire brigade were overwhelmed with the job basically. And they said, we'll go to life threatening incidents, but we haven't got the staff or the equipment to do humanitarian incidents. So I said, I got called into police control because I'm one of the silver controllers for our team, it's like a tactical advisor for Mount Rescue. So I said I'd go in and talk into the group in there. I said we can do the humanitarian rescues. People that just want to get out of the houses because the electric's gone off or whatever. They're not really in any major danger, but anyway, rapidly, within about an hour and a half, we got overwhelmed with work. Jeez. I just hear rescuing people. So... In Mount Rescue England and Wales, where I can then call the neighboring teams in. So I made a call to the neighboring teams, booked our teams area and said, you know, can you send Swiftwater rescue teams in to just to help with this incident? And they got in and a couple of hours later they were overwhelmed. And so we, just kept going further and further out for teams. I think, I think at the peak we had about 23 different teams in. And you were in charge of all those teams as that incident controller? So I was in silver control. So we split it up into basically silver control and bronze control. So bronze control of the incident control is on the ground. Silver control is a bit more organized in the strategic logistics of it all. And then there's gold command, which is like, what's this going to look like in a month's time? Basically. Yeah. what was it like? What was it like to manage that whole, that whole incident though, you know, from that level that you were at? Yeah, it was, it was, was a bit of a hell of a learning curve for me. So it's certainly the biggest incident I've dealt with by far. Yeah. I got the impression when I walked into that room, cause there are loads of agencies in there. It's not, it isn't half as organized as anybody thinks it is. So they're all trying to figure out the best way to do this and they're all talking to each other and coming back and doing things and then every eight hours we have a meeting to go through the Chief of Police and we all say what we've done and what we're about to do and then we go away and we talk to our people, see if it's actually possible to do what I've promised we can do and how we're going to make that work and I got the feeling. from listening to other people talk and other agencies talk, because they're paid agencies, so you've got like the councils and the police and the fire brigade, the ambulance, bus guard, whatever you're talking to, they have a lot of hoops to jump through before they can actually do what they want to do. Granted, if there's a fire, a fire brigade are going to go put the fire out, that's the end of that. Something out of the ordinary, they had to go back and check all the time. Are we allowed to do this? we got the capability to this? I, I think, was in a lucky position. So I knew the team I had behind me and I thought, well, they're going to make it work. If I promise it, they'll make it work. So I pretty much promised whatever anybody wanted to hear. And I thought, I know we can make this work. We can get people to do this and just... And we did. I think we were there three, four days in total. I was certainly there for two and a half days before I got out, before I actually walked away from it. Gosh. So when that was finally over, what was the one thing that stood out in your memory, you know, out of all that, what is the one thing you remember from the event? Well, it was exactly that, that whatever I promised they did. And how did the team, did they do it? Yeah, absolutely. Good as gold, they did everything I asked and more besides. And you know, they rescued people left, right and center. And to be honest, they were learning. Some of them were learning on the job as they were going along. Yeah. And they worked their socks off. They really did. Well, I mean, so you go through an event like that, but in that retrospect, you know, what advice would you give rescue teams before that? big event comes before the big event arrives. Well, and it's back to how we started this. You've got to train together and be sure you know what the rest of the people are, their capabilities are. Now, and if you work close enough together and you stay close enough together, you'll be able to rely on them to do whatever. And I got, it was quite touching really, cause I knew whatever I promised I could get done. I wasn't making promises out of the wild and think with my fingers crossed. thinking I hope to God this is gonna happen because I knew it was happening. knew I had them, you know, they had my back all the time. that's great. It's very easy. My job really was really easy. I mean, I'm not particularly fond of water rescue and I don't get involved in it if I can possibly avoid it. So you won't find me in a wet suit or with a PDF on going in the water. I would not do that because that's not my thing. to be involved and to know they would do it was, it was just brilliant, to be honest. And you worked, you said you brought in all those other rescue teams. How, how common is it for you to work with those other rescue teams in your area? So big searches, we will sometimes bring all the rescue teams in and other assets like search dogs from all over the country and whatever we can get a hold of. So it's not very common, but it does happen. It happens in You know, big rescues where you need lots of rope work or you need skills that we don't have like the cave rescue. Yeah. You talked about that. Might as well bring it up. So that's how we sort of got in touch as I saw the post. You guys had a dog stuck down in a cave and I happened to reach out to you about that. What was the story with that? So yeah, basically a guy pulled up on the moors right up on the top of the moors where one of the roes pulled into a lay by, took his dog for a little walk. Dog had to sniff around and vanish. basically and there's like little fissures in the the moors up there where it separates moves around and he'd gone down one of these the dog had gone down and What happened and it was a wasn't ⁓ it's only about this wide was this fisher It wasn't very wide at all, but it was about I would think maybe six seven meters deep and there were a couple little vents where it the dog has sort of landed in this vent then as it had been wiggling around and breathing it had dropped down into the next one And so it eventually had got to the bottom of this. And so I was, I think I was the second person on scene for our rescue team. And the first guy, I had a quick chat with the first guy and he says, well, I've had a look down there. I can't see the dog. They sat and hear it, but I can't see it. And I got my head torched and looked down just whole and thought there is no way in hell I'm going down there. That is a fact. So, and we were really scratching our heads and said, ⁓ this is going to pan out. And obviously the guy with the dog was panicking and he was getting He was getting really upset and clearly he felt quite a lot about this dog. And then a few more team members turned up and we sort of scratched our heads. And funnily enough, we have a vet on our team who's part of the team. So he said, well, hopefully the dog's fine. He says, it'll be all right down there. He says, but we do, you know, and he sort of oversaw a lot of it to make sure the dog was fine. And the guy calmed down a bit once he realized he was a vet. and had some expertise. So what was the overall plan that you worked out to get the dog out? So one of our neighboring teams is what's called a joint team. They're a mountain rescue team and a cave rescue team as well, up at Wharfdale. So it's just the next team alone, basically. So we give them a ring really and said, look, this is what we've got. It's very tight. Can you help? Is there anything you can do? And the guy, the the team leader for a poor off daily says, we have one team member that is very, very small and thin, but we're going to need, we're going to need to see photographs of it because it's about 60 or 70 mile ride out for them to come to our area. So it'd be a long, you know, a long trip for them to come. says, we need to make sure we can do something before we set off. Right. So we took all the photographs and we had like. different things to sort of demonstrate how wide it was, you know, my hand and boot and this sort of thing so you could see exactly how wide it was. Anyway, we emailed the photographs to him and two minutes later he said, yeah, she's not looking at him. She said, that's fine. She can get down there. Nice. No. So we were still very skeptical. thought this isn't, I don't know if this is going to happen or not. Anyway, we all sat around and about an hour later she turned up with three or four other cave rescue team members. In the meantime, The fire brigade had turned up. So we were talking about this earlier, and this is a good point. The fire brigade turned up and they said, we've got ropes, harnesses and we've got one guy that's trained in going in caves and we're willing to give it a shot. So down you went. But because he had ropes and harnesses on on one thing another, he couldn't get through the first vent. ⁓ wow. He just couldn't get through and he says, well, can't, you know, he said, I've tried my best and I can't get through it. So he says, no, I don't know what this girl's gonna do when she gets here because it is very tight. Anyway, this girl turned up and she said, well, obviously I'm not gonna get through there with ropes on, so I'll not put any on. The chief of the fire brigade says at this point I've got to walk away now because I cannot stand and watch this. Yeah, yeah, Because if it goes wrong, I don't know what we're going to do. So she walked away, the chief of the five-year-old walked away, and this girl wriggled away, died right down into the bottom with the dog, and she ended up pushing it back up through the first vent. Yeah. And holding it, and so she's in the bottom of the hole, pushing this dog up, and somebody else head first goes down to grab the dog and pull it up through the second vent, and out like, basically. But, and then obviously the girl managed to wriggle herself back up, but... To show you how tight it was, she had a helmet on when she went down and the helmet got wedged in the vent. And she had to undo the chin strap and drop out of the helmet to get through. That is tight. That is very tight. And that's guts. That's real guts. But so, mean, obviously that's a brave ⁓ rescue for anybody. But what came of that is, ⁓ I I saw it over here in America, stuff like that. You you must've seen donations after that and that's probably a good thing for you guys. know, that sort of outreach and that sort of press. Yeah. ⁓ To be honest, that raised more money for us than all the other rescues put together it did. Yeah. It's always the dog. It's always a dog. If you've got a video of a dog on Facebook wagging its tail, people will throw money at you for that. That's awesome. That's a great story though. And that was, that's, that's good to see. I want to get your perspective on American rescue teams. What do you think it... You know, what are your thoughts on American rescue teams? Do you think that we do anything particularly well that you, that you notice? So the limited experience I have with American rescue teams, the bits I've seen on Facebook and normally demonstrating equipment and things like that is professional, very professional, very well-trained. ⁓ I don't know. So I, the rescue service in America is a paid, is it We do have our career firefighters and you know, like our USAR teams, but we do have volunteer sort of mountain rescue teams, know, dedicated mountain rescue teams. And a lot of them are volunteer or donation based as well and volunteer firefighters. I don't know if the UK has that volunteer type system. Yeah, we do. Yeah. The call guys, we do have a mix. So I mean, from my perspective, for what little bit I know of them, they always seem very well trained and professional, how willing they'd be to kick some of the rules out the back door to get a job done. don't know. And you might be surprised if the chief walks away, if the chief walks away, anything can happen. We can make anything happen. Talk about team building. If you, if you personally arrived tomorrow to evaluate a rescue team that you had never met, what are a couple of things that you would look for to determine if they were ready to take on a big incident? So I'd want to like see them. in an exercise scenario and how well they work together. Do people need directing or are they just getting the job done? So that's probably the biggest thing. It's one thing to have half a dozen people stood at the side of you saying, tell me what to do and I'll go do it. It's another thing entirely to have half a dozen people that don't need telling to just go on and do it. And you know when a team yells when there's no talking and it just gets done. I mean, there might be... There might be some ribbing back and forth of each other. Yeah, but there's not somebody barking instructions and getting somebody else to check it. It just gels. No one it gels. So you were probably affected like we were by Covid back in 2019, 2020. That was our busiest year by far that year. Just because everyone was out hiking? Well, because nobody was going abroad, basically. Everybody that should have been laid on the beach in Spain was walking over the hills here falling over because they're not used to it. And we dealt with 120, 130 call outs that year. We had done massive. And we had a limited number of people attending call outs from our team because some people felt they couldn't because they didn't want to bring COVID back or get infected or whatever. And by the end of that year, that core team that were going out to all the call outs, We're working so well together that we could literally go rescue somebody in silence. Yeah, I'm sure. It was just, you know, we could have gone blindfolded and done it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's when a team finally gels and comes together, you know, it's, it's that, it's the perfect. It's just training is that, but that's training on live jobs. Yes. Basically. But that's all it is. It's just repetition and training. And I suppose in that year, particularly, we all had a. drive to go do it. Whereas if all them incidents have been put on as training, we wouldn't have attended half of them because it was like, well, we did that last week. We're not going to get in this week. But because there were live jobs, go to every woman. Yeah. Everyone's excited. You're getting out there, you're actually doing it. You know, that's what we say sometimes at the firehouses. Sometimes you just need a fire to get the group firing on all cylinders, right? You know, the team comes together. Talking about team readiness, what do you think the biggest long-term threat to team readiness is? it? Is it the lack of training? Is it the lack of funding, leadership, complacency? To be honest, it's probably lack of incidents. So if we don't get incidents for quite a while, people get a little bit rusty about how quickly they have to jump out the front door, get in the car and go. And they're like, my kit's all over the place. It's not where I need it to be. And because we haven't had a call out for ages, we all get a little bit slack and my bag isn't packed completely right. That complacency, that's what it is. It is definitely. And you never get complacency when you're lots of call outs. You get it when you're not getting the call outs. And think that's it. And if there's a big problem, or one of our biggest problems is keeping people motivated when it's Working through those quiet times. Yeah. So you know a team, it'll be probably February, March, April will be our quietest months. We'll get a couple of car rescues because they've got snowed in somewhere or snowed out. But that's, it's nothing really. Nobody's going out on the hills walking much. And the people that are going out are so well-trained they don't get done in rescuing. And so then, and keeping people motivated in that time, that's the biggest job. No, I fully agree about that. And I think that goes back to sometimes you just need a fire. you know, in the fireside. Yeah, no, it's a fun. Knock the rust off. In closing, I just want to ask you, you've spent decades responding to emergencies, leading volunteers and helping people out on what's probably the worst day of their lives. After 25 years in Mountain Rescue, what have these call outs taught you about people and what keeps you answering the pager at 3 a.m.? Well, answer the second one first. What keeps me is the feeling you get when it's over. and you've managed to get somebody out of the situation they thought they couldn't get out of. And knowing, so my stock statement, you ask anybody on our team, the one thing I say is, you know, when we've rocked up, we have to make it work. Whatever it takes, there's nobody coming. We've got nobody else to phone. That's it. There's no one. That's, you know, it's funny that we say that. There's no one coming. It's up to us. That's the mantra. The ambulance service have phoned us because they can't do it. Exactly. The police have phoned us because they haven't got the staff. So we've got nobody else to phone. We need to make it work. However, we're going to do this. And yes, it might not be textbook, but at the end of the day, it's still got to work. We still have to get them out of there and we'll, you know, and we're sticking with it until we've done it. But the feeling at the end of that is special. It really is special. And it's that, can't, that's like, it's like a drug to me is that I can't get. That's fair. So, you know, it's For anyone listening who wants to help donate to the Scarborough and Rydale Mountain Rescue team, how do they do that? So we have a website, it's the easiest way. We've got a website, we've got a Facebook page. you know, if you put in Scarborough and Rydale Mountain Rescue team in search engine, you'll find us and there's a donate clip there and you can just get it that way. Perfect. Well, Roger, wait, I greatly appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk to us about... ⁓ about the Scarborough Rydale Mountain Rescue Team and your experiences. And I think our listeners over here are going to get a lot out of it. And I just want say thank you from the rescue lab. ⁓ that's quite all right. Thank you for asking me. Absolutely. Well, hey, everyone else, thank you for listening. And we go check out the Scarborough Rydale Mountain Rescue Team's page, see what they're up to, go ahead and help donate to them, please. And Roger, we'll catch you out there. Maybe I'll see you at the winter ice festival that you guys are going to put together for. right, sir. Take care. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Rescue Lab. If you found value in today's conversation and want to help strengthen the rescue community, consider supporting the New England Rescue Collaborative Foundation. Every donation helps fund technical rescue scholarships, training opportunities, and educational incentives that prepare rescuers before the next call comes in. You can learn more or make a tax deductible donation at N.E. Rescue Collaborative. And one last favor, if you enjoy the Rescue Lab, the best way to help us grow is by leaving a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps more rescuers discover these conversations and keeps us bringing you stories and lessons from some of the world's best rescue professionals. Until next time, keep learning, keep training, and remember, no one else is coming. It's up to us. I'm PJ Halloran, and this is the Rescue Lab.