Air Ambulance Bradwell Marina

In The St Lawrence fairway Committee meeting just up the river one day we were discussing who to give the spare charity money to.
R N L I or Air Ambulance
Air ambulance won hands down on the basis it comes 4 times a month if we are unlucky & the RNLI comes just once a month if we are lucky

I did see the ambulances, but not the chopper. Are you sure it did arrive?
 
...Because that was run by Dover CG and was nothing to do with the local rescue teams... For example, although "Thames CG" has closed, the location is still the base for the local rescue team. Not the same as the people you talk to on the VHF
 
...Because that was run by Dover CG and was nothing to do with the local rescue teams... For example, although "Thames CG" has closed, the location is still the base for the local rescue team. Not the same as the people you talk to on the VHF
So ( jokes aside & being serious now) where does the call to arms originate from in the first place. How would the local team have known there was an incident to react to?
 
Local CG rescue teams are another resource (as is the RNLI) called upon by 'the CG', they are not the people you talk to on the VHF. There are about 3500 of them around the coast, organised into about 350 teams. If 'the CG' needs local shore presence on scene at an incident, or needs a missing person searched for, or go sort out suspected unexplored ordnance , or go do a whole plethora of stuff, then these are the people who will be paged by 'the CG' e.g. Dover or Humber, and will turn out and go there. If Dover or Whoever give them duff info about location I can assure the local team will pretty quickly suss it out.
If you see a bunch of folk in a CG truck, probably dressed in blue boiler suits, then they are from a CG Rescue Team, or CRT, they are local people and they know their stuff.
 
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So the call is generated by the main CG is it not?
So if they say that there is an incident in Burnham then until someone realises there is a mistake that presumably is where the initial reaction takes place - does it not?
 
The point I was originally making was that any CG's who turned up at the Bradwell incident would have been volunteers from a local CRT (actually the local CRT, there's one based at Bradwell in the building just up the access road to the marina), and not a professional CG that you have heard on the VHF who's in the Ops Room at Dover or Humber or Fareham.

The answer to your most recent question is probably 'yes'! We've all read about some CG's in the Ops Room apparently lacking local knowledge, and that appears to be a well-predicted result of the CG reorganisation. Just please don't tar the local volunteers (whose pagers, like the RNLI's, work 24/7) with the same brush.

It's very common for the role of the local CG force to be misunderstood or even unknown, and that's because unfortunately the MCA are dreadful at P.R. as well.
 
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Family friends of my parents had a farm near the old Tol-Pedn CG lookout near Land's End and had a trailer permanently "garaged" on the farm, to which the Fordson was hitched in the event of a shout. Several breeches buoy rescues of trawlers going aground around the area in the 60's...
 
Just please don't tar the local volunteers (whose pagers, like the RNLI's, work 24/7) with the same brush.

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I do not think I did - You are the one who started on about local volunteers
One can only have respect for them -
Only I just think that there is the odd twit out there directing them in the first instance- & that I am sure you cannot deny. Hence my off the cuff comment in the first instance.
It was meant in humour & no way meant to be a derogatory remark directed at the locals although in hindsight it may have looked that way. But that is not the fault of the volunteer force . I have had dealing with them in connection via my interests with moorings in the Blackwater from time to time & they seem very professional
 
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