Pete Farnell and Search Dog Meg Mountain Rescue Search Dog Handler with Calder Valley Search and Rescue Team

"Mountain rescue work falls into two broad types, searching for missing people or evacuating injured or sick people from open country to the nearest road for an ambulance, or landing site for the helicopter to take them to hospital for further treatment.

Search work hasn’t changed much during the Covid pandemic, I can still use Meg to search for missing people in the same way that I always have, the difference comes if we have to deal with a patient.

We treat all patients as if they may have the virus, regardless of whether they have symptoms or not. This means working in helmet, mask and goggles, plus overtrousers and jacket. Hot and steamy in the current warm weather!

Once the patient is handed over to the ambulance service we need to disinfect our stretcher along with any other equipment we use. When the equipment is dealt with we turn to disinfecting ourselves, we have worked out a procedure for doing this, but it takes a while at the completion of every job.

When we get the vehicles back to base they also need to be disinfected, wiping down all surfaces such as steering wheel, gearstick, light and indicator stalks, door handles etc.

Once home, the uniform goes in the washer for a hot wash and the rescuer goes in the shower!

All this means that jobs are taking nearly twice as long to complete as they previously did. The message from mountain rescue is do go out for exercise (we are!) but keep things as safe as you can, now is not the time to push the limits of your skills on the hill, take it steady and stay safe."

7.5.20