Managing Emergency Procedures and Hazards

How do you manage a situation where you are leading a group and somebody is injured or unable to move for some reason? The text book answer is to firstly make sure you are safe, secondly make sure the rest of the group is safe and then thirdly sort out the casualty. This is all very well but how would I cope?

This was why I signed up for a 'Managing Emergency Procedures and Hazards' course run by Mike Raine and recommended by the Mountain Training Association.

Walking past Ffynnon Lloer

We met by Llyn Ogwen in North Wales and walked up Pen yr Ole Wen. On the way we talked about being aware of potential hazards and trying to think ahead. We discussed a particular scenario where someone has slipped off the path down the hillside.

Put on some more clothes, get the group to put on some more clothes, get the group into an emergency shelter and make a plan. We were thinking we should go down to the casualty next - but quite honestly,  if they haven't been able to climb back up you are going to need to call Mountain Rescue.

You might as well do that straight away. If you do call them you want to have all the information that they will ask for ready. They'll almost certainly tell you to stay put but you will want to get down to the casualty, possibly with someone else so maybe it would be better to write it all down and get someone else to phone for help? 

I know from other training that this would include: your grid reference, what happened when, who you are, the state of the party, any potential hazards to rescuers, weather conditions, how well equipped the group is, and what your plan is.

Of course that's just one scenario but thinking it all through before you act is well worthwhile. What you don't want is to be cut off from the group with no phone signal. In fact, thinking about it now, if you are planning on leaving the group for a while it could be worth exchanging phone numbers with some other group members. After all, you won't be able to call the person who is on the phone to Mountain Rescue. 

Plenty of other scenarios are possible of course. No phone signal where you are, nowhere to easily make the rest of the group safe etc. However just thinking this one through has given me a bit more confidence about dealing with other situations.

Mike recommended the Blizzard products: Blanket, Bag and Survival Jacket. We tried on a survival jacket and you could feel yourself warming up. Mike said that he'd spoken to someone at the hospital who dealt with people from rescues and they said that if people arrived in a Blizzard bag/blanket/jacket they'd treat their injuries and f they didn't, they'd treat for hypothermia!

Other great kit: Dachstein Mitts, Supalite 10 Person Bothy Bag and Personal Locator beacon. An idea that I really liked was a 1 metre square sheet of 5mm closed cell foam that you could quickly put under a casualty to protect their torso from the ground. This was pretty light.

It was a great day out in a fabulous location and really interesting to talk to other members of the group who are at various stages of their mountain leading 'journey' from working towards their summer mountain leader qualification to running their own outdoor pursuits company

Looking across Llyn Ogwen at Tryfan and the Glyders