Mountain Rescue England & Wales has recently released its “Review of the Year” for 2016 which includes the call-out statistics for the whole national organisation.  Not surprisingly, the general trend is an increase in the number of times that individual teams are being called out each year although the total number of people assisted has dropped just slightly from 2015.
During 2016 the member teams of M.R.E.W. received 2,074 calls from 32 different statutory agencies which resulted in 1,812 call-outs.   A total of 1,785 people were assisted of which 360 had serious or fatal injuries and 1,218 had minor injuries or were unhurt.   The team members spent 81,778 hours on operational call-outs (not including training or fundraising.) all of which are given freely by the volunteers.
Breaking down the volunteer hours; 50,138 were spent on Rescues, 9,680 were spent on Civil Incidents (flooding, crime scene assistance & animal rescue etc.) and 21,960 hours were spent Searching for lost or persons reported missing.
There were only 14 days during 2016 when a mountain rescue team was not deployed somewhere in England or Wales.
Buxton Mountain Rescue Team’s own call-out figures reflect the national increase dealing with 96 incidents in 2106 compared with 83 in 2015, 79 in 2014 and 73 in 2013.
Mountain Rescue Teams will respond at anytime 365 days a year to assist anyone reported as being injured or in distress in a remote area but whilst the service is always free at the point of need there is a real financial burden which has to met in it entirety from charitable contributions.  If you can help we would love to hear from you.