Hopefully you will never need to use these, but its always better to be prepared, anything can happen to you, someone in your party or you come across someone who needs help in the countryside.
If you need to call out mountain rescue, first make a note of all relevant details:
• Location (with a grid reference if possible)
• Name, gender and age of casualty
• Nature of injuries or emergency
• Number of people in the party
• Your mobile phone number.
Dial 999 or 112, then ask for ‘Police’ then ‘Mountain Rescue’.
Give all your prepared details of the incident and STAY WHERE YOU ARE until contacted by the rescue team. If you have to make a further 999 call, follow this procedure in full again.
If you have hearing or speech difficulties, you can contact the 999 emergency services by text. You will only be able to use this service if you are registered with emergencySMS first, so register now — don’t wait for an emergency! Text ‘register’ to 999 then follow the instructions sent.
In an emergency, contact the emergencySMS service by texting 999. Your message should include ‘Police’ + details of incident + location.
It’s worth remembering you don’t need credit on your phone to make a 999 call and to dial 999 it just needs to find a network and it will call.
I do a lot of running in the hills and have a spare phone for emergencies, just in case. It’s an old nokia (not smartphone) and the battery lasts for days.
Author: Andy
