Ranger Roy National Trust: Serious stuff then games.

Thursday, 28 March 2013

Serious stuff then games.

Last week I was involved in one of the more unusual of my activities. The National Trust owns a house on the island in Derwentwater and we need to have plans in place for what we would do in the event of a fire in the house. It’s obviously not quite as simple as drawing alongside the house in the usual fire tender so we carry out regular practice sessions. For the island these involve Cumbria Fire & Rescue, the National Trust and Keswick Mountain Rescue Team.

This was a full-scale rehearsal to test our procedures. In total we had four engines and two boats from Cumbria Fire & Rescue and two boats from the Mountain Rescue Team.

Of course the gear, including light-weight pumps and hoses, and the crew have to be taken over in the boats. All were on the scene very quickly and three teams of two fire-fighters donned breathing apparatus and entered the cellars of the house with charged hoses to carry out a simulated rescue of three dummies. Members of the Mountain Rescue Team helped with the evacuation of the ‘casualties’ to the boats.

It was a good joint exercise that went very well. All the effort was rewarded by the tenants of the island providing copious amounts of tea and cake. As you can imagine, a huge amount of cake was consumed!

But, it’s not all so serious.

We have had the unexpected recent snowfall and it was too good an opportunity to miss. We ended one day with a good, old-fashioned snow ball fight. Sadly I have to report that two foresters walloped five rangers. In our defence, the foresters are much younger and fearless! Daisy wanted to join in the fun so she had some snowballs delivered ‘underarm’ so that she wouldn’t be hurt or frightened.