GMFRS RTC Extrication Team shines at UKRO Festival of Rescue 2023

GREATER Manchester Fire and Rescue Service’s (GMFRS) Road Traffic Collision Extrication Team scooped four national awards as they took part in this year’s United Kingdom Rescue Organisation (UKRO) Festival of Rescue hosted by Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue last week (14-16 September).

The Extrication Team has retained their title as the Best Extrication Team in the UK for the second year in a row. The team members also took the awards for ‘Best Incident Commander’ and ‘Best Medical Team’, while were placed second for 'Technical Rescue Operators'.

From left to right: Medic Mark Palin, Medic Stephen Fisher, Medic Ashley Capper, Incident Commander Ian Melville, Technical Tom Weate, Technical Simon Moore, Technical David Nelson

Winning ‘Best Extrication Team’ means that the team will be qualified to compete in next year’s World Rescue Challenge which will be held in Portugal.

Over the two-day rescue challenge, the team completed two scenarios, in the grounds of Lincoln Castle, safely and efficiently rescuing the casualties from complex scenarios before the time ran out. They also attended workshops after the competition to enhance and share their knowledge on electric vehicles.

Group Manager Ian Redfern said: “I'm incredibly proud of the team, they've been training hard, focussing on marginal gains, debriefing every action and paying attention to every detail.  Their performance at this year's Festival of Rescue in Lincoln was even better than last year’s result. 

“I would like to make special mentions to Station Manager Ian Melville who retained his best Incident Commander title, and Crew Manager Steve Fisher, assisted by Firefighter Ashley Capper, who became the first Greater Manchester firefighters to win best Medic at a national rescue challenge.”

On the back of last year’s win at the UKRO Festival of Rescue in Birmingham, the Extrication Team is already back at training for the 2023 World Rescue Challenge taking place in Lanzarote next month. Stay tuned on our social media for further updates.

As well as our Extrication Team, GMFRS also took part in the trauma care and rope challenges in this year’s UKRO Festival of Rescue. All of these challenges act as a learning platform for firefighters across the country to test, expand their skills and promote good practice which would be useful when responding to incidents.

For the first time, Corporate Trainers Laura-Jo Dicken and Andrew Holden from the Corporate Training Team competed in the trauma care challenge.

Laura-Jo and Andy had two challenging scenarios and performed really well, their feedback was positive with some learning identified which they will be focussing on for next time.

Corporate Trainer Laura-Jo said: “I feel really proud to represent GMFRS. It was a fantastic experience competing in UKRO Festival of Rescue, we’ve set a benchmark now and we are excited to start preparing for next year’s event which will be hosted by Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service.”

Our Rope Team, with members including Station Manager Phil Mellor, Crew Manager Scott Barry-Godsell, Crew Manager Chris Petty, Firefighter Phil Howard, Watch Manager Mike Hirst and Firefighter Bobby Jack, competed against eleven other Fire and Rescue Services in six challenges over two days with Lincoln Cathedral as its scenario backdrop.

Each scenario was complex and physically demanding with the team was assessed against three disciplines which are incident command, technical ability and medical care.

The team showed fantastic teamwork and tenacity during the challenges, and they received excellent feedback and praise from the UKRO assessors.

18/09/2023 16:45 PM