Red Cross Blogs

Battling the snow: diary of an emergency responder

By Mark Cox
January 7, 2010 at 5:19 pm

Guest blogger Ian Rideout, Red Cross operations director, has spent the week with his 30-strong team of volunteers helping people cope with deep snow throughout Northern Scotland. So far they have responded to more than 50 call-outs.

Sunday 3 January
We’ve been hectic since before Christmas and with this week’s forecast of heavy snow things are only going to get worse. We’ve been called out 22 times since the 21 December to help reach people cut off by the bad weather. The conditions are unprecedented: there’s been no let up in the weather and anything off the main trunk roads is impassable unless you’re in a 4×4.

Yesterday we had to drive across a field to reach a patient whose home was so cut off we’d considered sledging him out! We also had to dig through four feet of snow to release one of our carers and their disabled client after they were trapped by an avalanche that fell from the roof. One Red Cross ambulance team, which was ferrying a patient to hospital in Aberdeen, came across a stranded motorist and his 87-year-old mother near Nairn whose car had skidded off the road in heavy snow. The crew towed the car to a nearby garage, then took the elderly woman and her son home before continuing their journey to Aberdeen.

We’ve also been helping the ambulance emergency dispatch centre – the people who take the 999 calls – by using our 4×4s to get their staff into work.

Monday 4 January
Today we completed a 160-mile round trip to get a man to hospital for a critical renal dialysis session. He lived in a really remote area on the upper east of Scotland, which had been made totally inaccessible by the snow. There wasn’t a chance we could have got a normal car up there. It was slow going, but thankfully we go through and when we did, he was so pleased to see us! I think he was worried that if he couldn’t get to Raigmore Hospital by road, they’d have to airlift him out.

Tuesday 5 January
Today we were asked to check on a lady who had called the emergency services several times to say she was feeling dizzy and nauseous. They didn’t think it was too serious, but needed to be sure it wasn’t her heart so Angus our service manager set out to check on her. The elderly lady lived alone on a remote farm and hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone for days.

Angus got the 4×4 as far as he could but had to walk the last few hundred metres to her home. He checked her over and made sure she was okay, but then discovered she had no food in the house and hadn’t eaten properly for days. Thankfully some neighbours had seen the Red Cross Land Rover and came over to see what was happening and they stepped in to help. That’s what times like this need, people to step up and look after each other, especially older people who can easily become isolated and vulnerable.

Later on we managed to transfer a patient from hospital to home. They’d been discharged four days ago, but couldn’t get home because of the snow!

Wednesday 6 January
Today the WRVS called to ask if we could help them to get Meals on Wheels out to around 30 elderly people in the Elgin area who rely on the service for their lunch and dinner – it might be the only proper meal they get all day. The WRVS normally use volunteers, with their own cars, but given the huge snowfalls they’d really struggle to reach some people, especially in the more remote areas. Thankfully we’ve got an office in Elgin and three of our young volunteers got out in the 4×4s and took the WRVS team to deliver about 26 meals. The Meals on Wheels isn’t just about food though: it’s also a chance to check on elderly people’s welfare and make sure they’re ok.

Later on we helped free up some beds at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. This is the biggest general hospital in the Highlands and was starting to feel the effects of this busier than usual period. We managed to transfer three patients to local cottage hospitals and a further two back to their own homes.

Thursday 7 January
This morning we used the 4×4s to get to a remote location on the West Coast. The person needed to be transported to hospital urgently, but their home was totally inaccessible to normal vehicles. We managed to get to the house, get them in the back of the 4×4 and then met the ambulance at the road so they could be taken on to hospital.

We have more patient transports booked in today and we’ll be making sure Peterhead’s only paramedic gets from his home in Ellon to his shift in Peterhead on time.

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Tags: Emergencies, emergency response, First aid, severe weather, snow

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