Whitwell Moor, Bolsterstone
Over twenty of our team, joined by some of our aspiring new members, spent a training night on Whitwell Moor above Bolsterstone, practising a search for two missing men.
The search
In the scenario, the two men had last been seen on the moorland and in the woods nearby. The team split into three search parties, each with its own area to cover. Along the way the parties picked up clues to where the men had gone, and later found them both. Sadly one of the men had died. The other was having a medical emergency and needed treatment on the spot before he could be moved.
Searching in the rain
Then the rain set in. In the second part of the night, each party was given six-figure grid references for objects hidden on the moor. A six-figure grid reference narrows a location down to a 100-metre square, so finding each object meant searching that whole square carefully, in the dark and the wet.
Debrief
We finished back at our control vehicle for a debrief: what went well, what we would do differently next time, and what we learned from each other.
We train every week, whatever the weather, so that we are ready when a real call comes in. If you would like to help pay for that training, you can donate to the team.
