A busy weekend for St Bees RNLI volunteers

Following three call outs before the weekend and a very busy open day on Saturday the volunteers at St Bees RNLI were paged again on Sunday at 12:15pm to help a woman with a suspected broken ankle at Fleswick Bay.

Just after midday on Sunday St Bees RNLI volunteers were again called into service after a woman had fallen and injured her ankle at Fleswick Bay just North of St Bees.

St Bees Inshore Lifeboat ‘Joy Morris MBE’ launched into a very choppy Irish sea with four crew, two of whom were RNLI Casualty Care trained, to assist the local Coastguard Rescue Teams. When the volunteers arrived and met their colleagues from the Coastguard they agreed the best thing was a helicopter evacuation. As this was being arranged two of the RNLI crew made their way ashore so they could use their training to help with pain relief and make the casualty comfortable. After the helicopter ‘Rescue 199’ from Prestwick had safely winched the woman on board all units were stood down. As more rocks were now exposed by the falling tide, it was too risky for the two RNLI volunteers to rejoin their two colleagues back on the Inshore Lifeboat. It was felt the best course of action was for them to get a lift back with the Coastguard to Whitehaven Harbour and board the lifeboat from there.

Dick Beddows St Bees RNLI Operations Manager said ‘this was a very tricky operation that required a lot of care to avoid the casualty suffering any more pain. I would like to thank everyone involved who did a great job in very difficult conditions. This is yet another good example of the local search and rescue teams working well together for a positive outcome’.