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Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team is an integral part of the regional and national search and rescue service - providing primary cover in an area of approximately 350 square miles across East Lancashire and parts of Greater Manchester. The Team is made up entirely of volunteer members available 24/7 of which I am one.

Mountain Rescue isn’t perhaps the most accurate description of what we do, typically we provide specialist support to the Police, Ambulance and Fire Service and there are 2 major components to our work, outdoor and urban

We are called upon to rescue climbers who have fallen, or got stuck, walkers, mountain bikers , horse riders and fell runners who have taken a tumble or got lost and various other ‘outdoor’ scenarios.

What many people don’t realise is that by far the largest number of call outs are Urban work such as searching for missing or vulnerable adults and children, helping the police with forensic searches, pulling Ambulances out of the snow, or even replacing ambulances with our 4 wheel drive vehicles when the weather is too bad or inaccessible for a ‘normal’ ambulance.

In the last week, we have been paged at 1am to assist the police with a search for a person with mental health problems missing from home, at 4.30am to search for a person who had taken an overdose, at 7.30pm on Saturday to assist the Fire Service search for 2 people believed to be trapped in a culvert and 4.30 pm on Sunday to help the ambulance service treat and evacuate a chap who had a heart attack whilst out for a stroll with his family.

So even if you don’t consider yourself to be an ‘outdoor’ person the chances of you, or your family needing the services of a Mountain Rescue team is probably as high as you needing the service of the Police, Ambulance or Fire Service

Last year the team attended 133 incidents, by far the highest number of incidents for many years ( 2008 was only 44)  and with the government budget cuts facing the Police, Ambulance and Fire Service our workload is only going to increase. Unlike other services, we don’t get any cash from the Government. In addition to holding down full time jobs, training at least once every week  and answering call outs, the team members, their friends and families do all of the fundraising

At the moment, the team are based in a converted End Terrace house, which is no longer large enough to accommodate the team and its 4 vehicles, let alone cope with an expanded team and as such we urgently need a new base.

So far, we have secured the land, drawn up the plans but we now need to raise £500,000 to start the building phase of the project and this money needs to be raised in addition to the £40,000 a year the team needs to cover its operating costs. At the moment, we only have about 5% of the cash we need

So I have decided I am going to attempt the Half Rossendale Way in a Day which is 18 miles of hard slog up hill and down dale, in the hope that this will provide you with sufficient inducement to part with your hard earned cash which we desperately need. But what is as important is I need your help to spread the message to your friends, family, clients and colleagues in the hope that some of them will consider supporting us in this project.

If you would like to know more about the team, and our work, go to www.rpmrt.org.uk

Russell