Joining Search and Rescue

Joining Search and Rescue….

It was a couple of weeks later when the Search Team got back to me and if I wasn’t convinced before that it was meant to be, I was when I answered the phone. Bizarrely, the Membership Officer for the team on the other end of the telephone was an old Scout Leader of mine! I didn’t have much to do with Richard Archer in the scouts as our paths only crossed briefly, but I would now consider him one of my best friends in the team.  

Applications to join were quite simple back then. I was asked to turn up to a training session on a Wednesday night and bring along some form of ID with me. I was excited when I turned up for my first session, having been asked to meet Richard at the gates of the military base where the team stored its equipment. A quick security check and I was back in my car following him across the base to the team’s hanger.  

I was impressed when I arrived at the hanger. The team had two Land Rover defenders and a new Mercedes Sprinter parked up and Richard explained to me that the Sprinter had just recently been acquired via a lottery funded grant and was now fitted out as the teams control vehicle. It formed the control hub for each search deployment and was where the brains of the search operations planned and liaised with the Police. He explained that all the equipment I saw was funded by the public and that the team attended all sorts of events throughout the year to raise funds and would be expected to attend them.  

The quick tour continued and I was shown all sorts of pieces of equipment – from stretchers to first aid kits to rope access equipment. I was introduced to the team members (about 30 in all) and then the evenings training started. The session that night was going to be on coping with death and recognising when someone was deceased. It was delivered by a doctor who was the teams go to advisor for clinical matters and he went through his slides on recognising signs of life extinct. It was, to say the least, a lesson to focus the mind. If I wasn’t sure about whether Search and Rescue was right for me, this would be the main reason why. It’s one of the main reasons we see people decide it’s not for them.   

Those in the team recounted their own experiences of finding missing persons who were deceased and it was clear that one of the team’s main roles would be reuniting loved ones with their missing relatives. It was also clear that the type of work the Police asked the team to do means that many of the people who were missing were also despondent and that finding them dead was a likely outcome of many of the searches. It was something I hadn’t thought of before and it was a far cry from the work I had seen Mountain Rescue Teams carry out on the TV, when stranded walkers would call them asking for help. It would seem that most of the people I would be helping the team look for would either not want to be found, or would not know they were missing. 

However, I wasn’t too concerned as I had already had my own experiences dealing with death, having investigated fatal accidents in my day job. I was quite familiar with pain and suffering that came with families losing loved ones as I had lost a friend to suicide a few years earlier so I knew how hard it was for friends and family. I began to feel that if I was able to be a part of something which could help make that more bearable, then this would make the whole experience worthwhile. 

 

The training evening finished with a trip to the pub and a chance to chat with other team members about their experiences. I started to feel that I was going to be part of a group of fantastic people who selflessly gave up their time to satisfy their desire to do good and help their community. It was exactly what I wanted and it was also evident that the types of people that get involved in Search and Rescue were great to be around. I was accepted right from the first evening and it couldn’t have felt more right. I said my goodbyes and was told that the next sessions training would be on Cannock Chase.  

The first practical session a week later was right in the middle of the Chase and saw us briefed on an exercise where a missing child had become separated from his parents and was last seen somewhere in the area. There was talk about the most likely area he would be found and how children act when lost. Statistics were referred to and we were all placed into small teams. My team’s leader explained how we should search and that the exercise would involve a search through the undergrowth surrounding the car park where we had arrived.  

Jim on a night time Exercise

I soon realised that I was under-dressed. Apparently the most useful piece of equipment would be leg gaiters and whilst I owned some, I hadn’t got them with me. The error of my ways would soon be apparent and the result of my mistake would last until the following morning. Our team leader led us all through the undergrowth in the search for a small child sized dummy fondly referred to as “Billy.” A shout from my right some thirty minutes later as we walked through the undergrowth asked us all to “hold the line” and it saw me waiting patiently in a large crop of nettles while the team’s medic practiced on the dummy. The pain from the nettle stings and the excitement from the evening meant that I’d be awake half the night.  

I attended training every week and looked forward to it immensely. It had given me a new lease of life and I was excited to be a part of the team. On my third week we were tasked to a local town in Staffordshire where we would be practising urban search techniques. We searched around the town and found ourselves in a field on the outskirts, where once again “hold the line” changed the team’s response to rescue as the search stage was complete. It was Billy again and I started to wonder why he was so careless becoming lost so quickly! This time he was propped up against a farm gate waiting for us to bring him back home where he would take his place on the hanger equipment shelves.  

Jim Receiving Member of the Year award (2016)

That nights training evening however, didn’t quite turn out the way any of the team had expected. “No duff” came the message through the radio. Having spent no time whatsoever with the military I had no idea what this meant. It was Jargon from a long list of phrases and words that I would have to learn. It meant that the training exercise was over as there was a real-life incident to deal with. The team had been called to help the Police. It was my first experience of the team’s response to a real call out. Richard explained to me that I was allowed to attend but I would have to stay with him in the control vehicle and just observe.  

The callout changed the atmosphere completely. Team members went from a relaxed jovial training mode to one of complete professionalism in an instant. Equipment was collected and packed away with efficiency, team members headed back to base to collect the other vehicles and everyone made way to a given location with me following behind. As we headed across the county in convoy the feeling was exhilarating. Whilst I was completely nervous at what I was going to experience it was utterly exciting being part of the response.  

And then, just like that, it was over. Richard pulled his car over and asked me to stop. He got out of his car and came to mine and then explained that the team had been stood down. Operating an SMS call system, team members had received the message that the missing person had been found by the Police and they were no longer needed. It was a strange feeling but one I would encounter again and again over the coming years. I was hugely  disappointed but at the same time filled with relief that the missing person had been found. 

Map reading in SSART

Training continued week in, week out and varied from practical search exercises to sitting in lectures at the hanger. It didn’t matter what we were doing though, I loved it and was learning so much. It was May 2011 when I joined the team and I was told there was a weekend course coming up and if I attended and passed, I would become a qualified Search and Rescue Technician. This meant I would be added to the list of personnel allowed to attend real life incidents.  

I attended the course and qualified in the November and my life in the search team became even more exciting. I would now spend the next few weeks staring at my phone wondering if it was still switched on waiting for a call out text message. Whilst my life was now so much more exciting, I wouldn’t realise until later that it still wasn’t quite complete. There was still something lacking.  

The team mainly consisted of foot searchers and I began to attend callouts and make new friends in the team. There was talk amongst some of my colleagues about setting up a dog section within the team. Up until now the team hadn’t used dogs to search for people but there was an opportunity for them to start using them. This was exactly what I wanted to be involved in. It was perfect for me and there was no way I wasn’t going to get involved. I spoke with Dave Barley, who was planning on getting his own dog to train up and I told him I wanted to get involved.  

To be continued…….

Arriving at a decision

Jim Receiving the Chief Scout Award

Following a dream…

As a young lad I was heavily involved in Scouting and I loved being outdoors. I learned so much about nature and living off the land. I thoroughly enjoyed navigating and map reading. I also found First Aid training interesting and it wasn’t long before I had filled my arms with badges and awards. I loved camping and spent most of my weekends camping with my fellow scouts, hiking across the Peak District Hills, kayaking down local rivers or climbing and abseiling in local quarries.   

Jim teaching Beavers and their fathers to kayak

It was inevitable given my love of nature and fascination with science that I would go on to take A’ level Biology at school and this put me in good stead later when I trained in slaughter houses as a Student Environmental Health Officer (EHO). I found that I was able to put of out my mind the sad practice of killing animals by concentrating on the fascinating biological systems exposed by the process.  

Training to be an EHO was tough and I was often heard grumbling with my fellow students about the amount of time we had to spend studying. We were required to attend lectures for up to 40 hours per week which, when compared to the other students who I shared accommodation with, seemed excessive – especially when they were only required to attend 10 hours of lectures a week! In addition to the university workload I was required to work at a Local Authority as part of my training. Whilst my roommates went home to their families to relax for the holidays, I would be found working in the Borough of Northampton as a student EHO. I would spend my weekends studying and falling asleep at my desk and I soon began to forget about the pull of the outdoors and how I had enjoyed it so much.  

In 2008, I went to work at Birmingham City Council in the Specialist Health and Safety Team investigating fatal and major incidents. My time in this team would turn out to be the best of my Environmental Health career and I soon found my skills stretched and improved until I reached the top of my game. It was during this job that I travelled around the country training fellow EHOs. Having investigated a number of gas explosions in catering businesses, I found myself somewhat an expert in Gas Safety within the Catering Sector and I trained hundreds of my colleagues around the country on how to carry out health and safety inspections within kitchens. Being flown up to Edinburgh to present at a conference was a highlight in my career and whilst it made me feel good about what I was doing, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that it just wasn’t for me.  

The Health and Safety Team members were a great bunch of people and I thoroughly enjoyed working with them. The work was tough and emotionally draining but the team pulled together and everyone looked out for each other. I investigated my first fatal accident, whilst at Cannock Chase District Council at the age of 24. Whilst that hadn’t been my first exposure to a dead body, I hadn’t realised how much it had affected me until years later when, after investigating a number of other fatal incidents, I was given Post Traumatic Stress Disorder training. This work had taken its toll on my emotional state, changing me indefinitely and it was one of a number of reasons why I left the team to concentrate on main stream Environmental Health work. 

Sponsored Hike Against the Cruelty of Kids - for NSPCC

It was during my time with the Health and Safety Team, however, that I rediscovered the joys of being outdoors. With a few of my team colleagues we decided to take part in an event to raise money for the NSPCC by hiking 22 miles across the Malvern Hills. Clearly, I would need to carry out a lot of training as it had been years since I had attempted to walk so far. I would spend the next few months before the event training with my colleagues by wandering around Cannock Chase or the Peak District. The training gave us plenty of time to chat and I would find myself talking to my fellow teammates about how I “used to love being outdoors spending time surrounded by nature.” They probably got bored with hearing me say it. 

It’s not often that you meet someone who you can really call a friend, but I’ve learned if you are lucky enough you may meet someone in your life who completely fills all of the criteria and can be called a true friend. Whilst the lads in the team dropped off with their training (they probably got fed up of me talking about how I used to love being in the outdoors!), my dear friend Surindar carried on dragging me all over the Peak District, testing both our stamina and our navigating skills. She was, and still is, someone who offers encouragement unreservedly and we found ourselves talking about our love for the outdoors during our walks. On one of our walks, as she listened to me complain about being an EHO and how I found it so tough, I went on to tell her about how I used to travel to the Lakes with fellow Scouts and how I thoroughly loved it. I told her how I would have loved to have joined the Mountain Rescue Teams up there and, true to form, her simple reply would change my life. “Why don’t you join them then? If it’s what you want to do – go for it!”  

At the time I would not even begin to realise how her words of encouragement would later change my life, but she had stirred something within me that encouraged me to search for a way to join an organisation like Mountain Rescue. I found myself trawling the internet and researching it further as soon as I got back home. Of course, I lived in Staffordshire in the UK where there are no mountains and is no Mountain Rescue Team so clearly, that wasn’t an option without uprooting my family and moving up to the north of the country. It was then that I came across an organisation called Staffordshire Search and Rescue Team (SSART). SSART is made up of volunteers from all walks of life who give up their spare time to train and assist the Police, and other emergency services, to locate missing vulnerable people.  

I had found an organisation, close to both my heart and my home and I knew there and then that it was meant to be. I contacted them via their website and awaited their reply.

To be continued….