In March, Oldham Mountain Rescue received a grant from the ELMC Grant Making Committee, for the sum of £511.43. The grant was awarded to go towards purchasing three full body harnesses. The grant was applied for by the members of Langley Lodge No3989, with the help of the Eastern Area Assistant Charity Steward, Russ Perks.
Oldham Mountain Rescue Team is a voluntary organization whose objective is “to save life and alleviate distress, primarily in upland and mountain areas” without cost or obligation. Oldham Mountain Rescue has a team of over 50+ volunteers who provide a professional rescue service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They are funded entirely by generous public donations and fund-raising campaigns. It costs around £45,000 a year to keep the service going. Oldham Mountain rescue was formed in 1964 and is celebrating its 60 years of service with an opening day in July to the public. It is also just one of 53 volunteer mountain rescue teams providing search and rescue services to help people in difficulties in the wild and remote places of England and Wales.
Oldham mountain rescue cover a substantial area, from the northern end of the Peak District National Park and the rural areas Greater Manchester, and has strong links with all emergency services, i.e. Greater Manchester Police, Northwest Ambulance and Fire Services and even the Coast guard. They roughly attend around 40 call outs a year, in 2023 they attended 37 incidents, which included 42 casualties and taking up 969 hours of time. They also support the Police looking for missing children or vulnerable people, and support their families at any time, as well as searching riverbanks and floodwaters. It requires a minimum of 20 volunteers for any emergency call up, and depending on the situation and the scale of the emergency it may require a lot more volunteers to attend.
On 21st May, members from Langley Lodge No3989, along with the Eastern Area Assistant Charity Steward, Russ Perks, and the Eastern Area Communications Officer, Lee Reilly, visited Oldham Mountain Rescue at their Headquarters in Greenfield Oldham. The visit was to present Lizzy Partington and other members of the team of Oldham Mountain Rescue with a cheque. The Members of Langley Lodge were given a tour of the building and given a wonderful talk on how the Oldham Mountain Rescue was first started and how it has grown over the years. They explained about the training, that they are constantly doing and how all members have a different aspect of training i.e. Medical, Abseiling and Driving. Also how they all use a text service Now for emergency call out`s and explained the procedure used in communicating with the police and emergency service when out on the hills, which is now used by all.
Lizzy then explained how grateful she was to all the members of Langley Lodge and the ELMC, for their kind and wonderful donation which has enabled them to purchase three full body harnesses. Lizzy then explained that the benefit of the harnesses is to improve safety for team members which will allow safer evacuation of casualties from steep mountains or cliff side areas. During this time the Eastern Area Communications officer, Le Reilly, kindly volunteered to try on one of the new harnesses. We were then showed the vehicles of the team that are used in a call out. A wonderful visit was had by all who attended, and it really opened your eyes to the amazing work that all the volunteers of the rescue team do to help save lives.