THE Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA) hosted a Regional Training Day for volunteer Search and Rescue teams from across the area at Livox Quarry near Tintern.

80 or so members of the different organisations within the ‘South West England Rescue Association’ (SWERA), which includes SARA, participated in a series of workshops on Saturday 10 October, . Based on their submitted preferences, there were workshops on Incident Command, Casualty Handling, Rope Rescue (both at introductory and experience levels), Water Rescue (ditto), and Land Search, plus there was a Cave Rescue Stretcher Challenge and also the opportunity to visit an actual cave in the Forest of Dean for an intro to real cave rescue. This was an excellent opportunity to work across teams, and for members to learn new skills.

Gloucestershire Cave Rescue Group, Prusik Rescue and RE-ACT for helped to run the sessions, as well as SARA members, and the Rapid Relief Team supplied wonderful food.

A SWERA spokesman commented “we are very grateful to the landowner for allowing us and SARA to use Livox Quarry for training, as it offers many possibilities within a small area. It was fantastic to see representatives from nearly all of our member teams there, and the feedback has been universally positive .”

The following day, the SARA Lifeboats were called out, along with RNLI boats, to a Mayday call in the Severn Estuary. However it rapidly became clear that there was actually no-one in danger. Then that evening, and again on the Monday, the SARA Land Search teams were called out to look for missing people in Gloucestershire. They were called out again this past weekend, on Saturday 17 October. All 3 of the missing people in these callouts were found safe. For more information about SARA’s callouts, visit www.sara-rescue.org.uk/call-outs.