Lost & Found | MREW | NWMRA | SAR Links | UK-SAR
Team member training continues to be a significant demand on our member’s time but it is essential to ensuring that we have Team members who are competent, confident and able to deal with an increasingly different variety of search and rescue tasks where we are asked to attend.
Each year, we typically run 25 days worth of training that has to cater for new Team members all the way through to senior Team members who have a wealth of experience and training behind them. What we actually train is driven by the nature of the incidents we attend.
Over the last few years the Technical Rope Rescue training has been successfully rolled out and it is at a level now where we are much less dependent on a limited number of people with the key skills. The publication of our Technical Rope Rescue Field Guide has also had an impact on Team members and it is gratifying to see the small booklet being looked in a variety of different situations. There are plans for a version 2 of the Field Guide.
However, the infrequently used Technical Rope Rescue (TRR) skills still require more practice so that we can be fully effective; we held a useful Guideline and Hi-line training session late in the year that a member of North Wales Fire Service attend as a guest. It is useful for us to foster these types of meetings because there are occasions when we have to operate together.
TRR consolidation days have also proved very valuable, it allows Team members to take the relatively controlled training in to a more realistic environment. This is also an opportunity to build pre-plans for technical incidents and these are an area that should be expanded. The pre-plans capturing important knowledge held by Team members and learning from operational and exercise experiences for particular scenarios, such as a stretcher evacuation from the Heather Terrace.
