On a misty hill overlooking Buxton and the Goyt Valley sixteen members of Cheshire Police’s Operational Support Unit met with members of Buxton and Kinder Mountain Rescue Teams to share experiences of searching for missing people.

The joint training day was organised to demonstrate the capabilities of each group and to determine methods of best practice to be deployed in the event of a lost or missing person in the upland areas of Cheshire and around the County border.  The day started at Buxton Fire & Rescue Station with a talk on search management which identified some of the hazards to be found on the moors including disused mineshafts.  Bill Whitehouse, Chairman of Derbyshire Cave Rescue, also spoke on the special skills required to enter even the just the openings of the caves and mines found around Alderley Edge.

Following a morning of theory and round the table discussion the police professionals and the volunteers of the two local Mountain Rescue Teams headed for the hillside above Corbar Cross, Buxton.  The weather was perfect for search practice as low cloud enveloped the hillside reducing visibility to 100 metres.  A cold brisk breeze stirred the mist as the parties spread across the moor in a perfect line to locate their target – twelve tins of Cola hidden earlier in the day!

Roger Bennett, Chairman of Buxton Mountain Rescue Team, said, “ It was a really worthwhile day which was as much about understanding how each orgainsation works as it was about learning new techniques.  The skills deployed to locate a missing person are the same as those needed to find cans of cola in long grass, only the scale changes.  Both groups learnt much about each other’s methods and now have a much better understanding of how they can work together in the future.  We send our thanks to Derby University for the use of its land at Oaklands Manor.”

Buxton Team members demonstrate the team’s search management computer software.