Red Cross Blogs

Never fear, Unimog’s here!

By Mark Cox
January 11, 2010 at 5:32 pm

What do premium lager Heiniken and the British Red Cross have in common? You guessed it: they both refresh the parts – of the country, that is – that other beers, or people, cannot reach. (Okay, so the point’s a bit laboured, but it’s been a busy week. Besides, you know what I mean.)

With the country at a standstill and snow virtually reaching up to people’s chins in some areas, it’s been a busy week for Red Cross emergency responders. But they have responded valiantly and, just as importantly, have had the right equipment for the job.

In slippery Bristol, where half the population seems to have ended up on its collective backside, demand for loaned wheelchairs from our medical equipment service has soared. But how could our brave volunteers hope to reach said injured citizens – 60 of them – who were scattered throughout inaccessible and often rural areas?

Enter the British Red Cross’ Unimog vehicle – a 7.5 tonne, Mercedes 4×4 truck – which is usually used overseas to deliver international aid in mountainous or flooded terrain. Essentially a life-sized Tonka toy, the Unimog has been monstering its way around normally impassable roads today and making sure that our wheelchairs reach all those poor souls nursing broken and fractured lower limbs.

Elsewhere in the country, emergency response volunteer teams in the Red Cross’ fleet of Land Rover 4×4 vehicles have also been giving priceless help to ambulance services by driving headlong into countrified and weather-beaten areas to collect patients or transport care workers. No wonder one ambulance spokesman referred to our volunteers as a ‘vital resource in reaching as many people as possible to offer life-saving first aid’.

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Tags: Emergencies, emergency response, First aid, Health and social care, medical, severe weather, snow, volunteer, Volunteering

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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