Episode 11 Countryside 999

Rural Britain has some of the most challenging environments

in the world.

In Scotland, the mountains, lochs and coastline encourage tourists

and locals to get out into the wilds.

But with that comes danger.

Keep your arms by your side!

The emergency services north of the border have to deal with extreme challenges every day.

From severe weather and treacherous terrain...

-Is the pain getting worse, do you think?

-Yes.

..to covering huge distances on country roads

with time against them.

So just get them out ASAP.

They work around the clock,

battling against some of the most difficult situations.

We'll be right at the heart of the action,

side by side with Air Rescue saving lives,

on the road with paramedics caring for the injured,

and following the police fighting crime,

as the emergency services work together

to pick up, patch up and protect the public in rural communities.

This is Countryside 999.

Coming up...

Royal Navy Search and Rescue

battle the elements to reach an injured climber.

Paramedics face blizzard conditions on a blue light run.

And a tip-off helps police officers on a drugs raid.

This one's obviously quite a young plant.

Normally they grow to maybe three or four feet high, sometimes taller.

Britain's countryside boasts some of the most staggering mountain ranges.

Wild landscapes like these lure millions of walkers each year.

Outdoor addicts, hooked on adventure.

But amid this wild and rugged terrain lurks danger,

and when the forces of nature take a turn for the worse,

the emergency services race to the rescue.

On Scotland's southwest coast, HMS Gannet is home to

one of Britain's busiest search and rescue teams.

They help people stranded in the most remote locations.

Today, the four-strong crew is led by co-pilot Geoff Richardson.

They're about to head out on a training exercise

when an urgent call comes in from their national control centre

for not just one, but two, mountain rescues.

In operations like this, every second counts.

They have a 15-minute window to get airborne

and start the 87-mile journey south.

They're travelling to the Lake District Western Fell range,

where two climbers have been injured in separate incidents.

Two minutes after takeoff, the crew get an update on both casualties.

The crew prioritise, and head first to the climber

who's dislocated his shoulder coming down the 648-metre Fleetwith Pike.

He's three miles away, across a rugged mountain range, from Pillar,

the location of the second casualty.

In order to reach the casualty, they fly up Buttermere Valley.

But as they make their approach, the weather worsens.

A local mountain rescue team has been despatched to the second casualty.

As the Navy approach their first job, they're in luck.

A brief weather window means the pilot can climb to the summit.

Clear door. Clear door. Roger, clear door.

Fleetwith Pike reveals itself as sheer sided.

Rescue by helicopter is the best option for the injured climber

stuck in this precarious location.

-Just coming round.

-Oh yeah, visual.

The Sea King helicopter circles round to get into a rescue position.

The question is, how long will the weather hold?

Police in Dumfries and Galloway

cover over 2,500 square miles of the southwest of Scotland.

Plenty of space for the cultivation of illegal drugs.

Last year, the police here seized drugs with the street value of over £2.5 million.

Over 10% of that was cannabis.

Today, the Dumfries officers are responding to tip-offs

about two local residents allegedly dealing in drugs

at separate addresses on their patch.

The briefing involves drug squad officers,

whose identities must be protected.

Their information suggests that the men are producing cannabis in their homes.

The officers are planning simultaneous raids on the two properties.

If their intelligence stands up, it will be down to these officers,

PC Matt Tate, Allistair Hope and Adam Potts

to bring the criminals in.

Both the raid teams leave together,

PCs Adam Potts and Allistair Hope

taking the lead in the raid on the first property.

The plan'll be when we arrive at the address, we go to the door,

initially see if it's open, try and take the person inside by surprise.

If not, we'll knock the door, see if we get any answer.

And if we do, we'll negotiate our way in.

If not, there's an MOA team here who'll force entry

and allow us to search after that.

Raids like this still get the adrenaline flowing.

I look forward to it, doing this,

it's...excitement.

With the team split between two operations,

Adam and Allistair proceed with caution.

One-five-seven to three-nine-five, that's us pulling up outside. Over.

The tip-off suggested one of the suspects is producing cannabis from this address.

Hello! It's the police!

It seems no-one's at home.

But the officers also have the suspect's work address,

so they decide to pick him up there,

rather than force entry to search the house.

They move fast before anyone tips him off about their house call.

The plan is now we're going to go to this guy's work and if he's there,

we'll detain him for a drugs search and bring him back here.

Roger, sergeant, are you in a position to pull along again?

Just in case he returns and in case it gets out the police were at his door.

The suspect works at a local garage.

He's taken by surprise when the officers arrive.

I need to take you to your home address to search it, right?

And I need to tell you you've been detained

-under Section 23 of the Misuse Of Drugs Act for the drug search.

-What, right now?

-Right now.

You don't need to say anything, but anything you do say we'll note down, and use as evidence, OK?

-All right.

-You want to put that down?

Once arrested, the suspect shuts up shop and accompanies the officers

back to his home, so they can search for drugs and drug-making equipment.

We go up to the house, I'll show you the search warrant, OK,

let you read over it,

and then we'll carry out a search of your home address, OK? Good man.

With the suspect now detained, the officers must now find

evidence of drug dealing to back up his arrest.

And it'll need to be hard evidence to make any charges stick.

It's not long before the officers discover that this man's interest

in gardening is not just ornamental.

Search of the loft has recovered a small scale cannabis cultivation.

This one's obviously quite a young plant.

Normally they grow to three or four feet high, sometimes taller,

and it's just confirming the intelligence has been accurate...

and, er, quite pleased with the result we've got.

A total of nine cannabis plants are confiscated, and the suspect

is taken to the police station to be formally charged.

Meanwhile, at the raid on the second property,

PC Matt Tate has got his hands on another sizeable haul.

The Royal Navy Search and Rescue Team has been dispatched

to two separate climbing accidents in the Lake District.

They battled bad weather to reach the first casualty,

stranded on the 648-metre Fleetwith Pike.

A break in the clouds meant the crew was able to spot

the Cockermouth Mountain Rescue Team and the casualty on the summit.

-Visual. We could land it on there, yeah.

-OK.

In such hostile conditions,

the weather could close in again at any time.

Winchman Lee Haggerty descends.

Steady there. Good position. Good position.

On the heather, OK, the winch, winch is disconnected,

raise the winch.

He races up a steep rocky incline towards the casualty,

and is met by one of the mountain rescue team.

Hello, mate, how you doing?

The casualty has already been secured on a stretcher

and given morphine for the pain.

Send you both up together.

Hello, mate, we've got the MRT leader and the doctor

we'd like to come with us, so if you're happy, I'll send them

up to you first, and then we'll recover the stretcher.

The mountain rescue team leader and their doctor are uplifted first,

while winchman Lee waits with the climber below.

With the mountain rescue team on board,

the crew now turn their attention to safely retrieving the casualty.

Uplifting people from treacherous icy terrain onto a moving aircraft

is a high risk activity in a mountain rescue.

33-year-old mountain climber Lee slipped on ice

and dislocated his shoulder coming down the Pike.

Last year, HMS Gannet crews attended 298 incidents.

They joined forces with Lake District MRTs five times.

Lee is their latest successful rescue.

Now, co-pilot Geoff

turns his attention to the second injured climber,

whose precise location is still unclear.

And there's also the issue of fuel to consider.

Facing bad weather, and low fuel, the team decide to drop

the first casualty off before they embark on the second rescue.

In southern Scotland's vast Dumfries and Galloway region,

40% of the population live in the country.

With such a massive patch to cover, paramedics have their work cut out

reaching young and old residents.

And winter weather poses big problems.

Dumfries paramedics Michael Harmjanz, in the driver's seat,

and John West, have a combined 36 years in the ambulance service.

It's 11am and they've just received a 999 call.

Of all the jobs they get, chest pains are one of the most urgent.

They're heading to a small village eight miles out of Dumfries.

It may look like a winter wonderland,

but the conditions make driving treacherous.

They've travelled eight miles in under ten minutes in poor weather.

When they arrive, the paramedics are met by the casualty's son-in-law.

Got one of these things here...

First, they check 74-year-old June's vital signs.

Chest pains can be a symptom of a heart attack.

And you say it's in your chest. Is it central or more to one side?

This was in the central...

June travelled to Scotland from Kent for her granddaughter's birthday.

June has a history of heart problems, so when she started

to get pains in her chest, her family called 999.

John hooks her up to an ECG machine for a heart reading.

Within minutes, he discovers an anomaly.

This thing here that we're seeing on the ECG could be old.

There's wee things called rabbit ears, which means that

there's wee anomalies in the... what they call the myocardium.

So how's the pain, or the ache, is it away altogether?

Not altogether, no.

Is it just up here in the shoulder?

It seems to go into here.

Hm-mm. Right.

John's not taking any chances.

June needs to get checked out by A&E consultants at hospital.

I feel very trembly.

You do, do you?

Well, we'll see if we can get that sorted out.

-You need these tests done and the only way you'll get them done is by coming with Michael and I.

-I know.

I bet you didn't expect this weather when you came up from Kent.

-OK to go?

-Just whenever, Michael. Thank you.

Right, date of birth, June.

An important part of John's job

is collating the patient's medical history to help the hospital team.

Half eight, right, so...

June is in less danger,

but there's still an urgency to get her to hospital.

I'm going to mark down the fact I gave you aspirin, things like that.

You're at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

44 minutes after they received the 999 call,

June's handed over to the A&E team,

who'll get to the roots of her chest pain.

With 27 years on the job, John thinks this time,

the symptoms aren't serious.

We brought her into Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

We've calmed her down, she's quite calm at the moment,

she says it's still... she can feel something.

Hopefully, they will be able to get her ECGs from her,

her tests that were done down in London, and compare them,

and if they're identical, everything's OK.

With their patient safely transported to hospital,

the guys in green are ready for their next rural emergency.

Drugs are often perceived as being an inner city problem,

but as rural police forces know only too well, they're everywhere.

Obviously a substantial quantity of herbal cannabis.

In Dumfries, the drug squad have had a tip-off about two men

allegedly dealing drugs and cultivating cannabis in their homes,

so they've set up a double drugs bust.

PCs Adam Potts and Allistair Hope have already arrested one suspect

at his work, and a search of his home

found his interest in horticulture was evident in his loft as well as his lawn.

A search of the loft has recovered a small scale cannabis cultivation,

and it's just confirming that the intelligence we had

has been accurate and...quite pleased with the result we've got.

And four miles away,

PC Matt Tate has success with another significant haul.

A raid on a second property reveals evidence of a cannabis plantation in the roof space.

This'll be where they've used for...

He's been using these to actually grow the plants in,

put the soil and that in it and then it's used just to grow it, so...

The discovery of this number of plants and drug-making equipment

suggests it's been cultivated on a commercial scale.

It's obviously been good intelligence,

it's been worth all of us doing it, so... We just attended

and knocked the door, female occupier answered the door,

explained who we were, what we were here for, and she let us in,

and it was as straightforward as that, yeah, no problems at all, it worked quite well.

And then, obviously we done the quick search

and found the plants in the attic, so, end of a good day.

Back at Dumfries police station,

the first suspect is formally charged by PC Adam Potts.

Do you want a private consultation with us

-before being questioned by the police?

-No.

The gentleman's said to us that all that was in the house

was a small amount of cannabis that he kept in his kitchen.

It's a common thing that people will say to us,

that there's a small amount in the house, so they think that we'll take that and then leave, really.

We've got a drugs search warrant, we're going to search the premises, and this is exactly why.

With this suspect in custody, it's now time to do the paperwork

and gather samples of the plants they discovered in their raids.

This is the samples that'll be sent away to be tested.

Cut off the plant so it's just a random leaf that we've taken,

that gets sent away to confirm whether it's a cannabis plant,

but it certainly looks like it.

The evidence is then labelled and bagged for submission to the court.

Today's been a good result, we've got...

I think the total is about £5,000 worth of cannabis

off the streets today,

so that's £5,000 worth of drugs that the drug dealers have lost out on.

But the other big thing as well is,

we've took all their equipment away which they use to make the drugs,

so that'll be their big loss, and they'll have to either restart,

and buy all that again, or give it up, so, good result today.

If found guilty of dealing or supplying,

their suspect could face up to a 14-year prison sentence,

an unlimited fine, or both.

The Royal Navy Search and Rescue team has travelled 87 miles

from its Ayrshire base to the Lake District

to rescue a climber with a dislocated shoulder.

Raise the winch.

With their casualty Lee now safely on board,

they must get him to hospital, then refuel,

so they can fly to a second casualty still stuck on a nearby peak.

The team must get the first casualty to hospital in Carlisle.

But it's a hairy journey involving a low flight path over some dangerous hazards.

When the weather's poor, that's when the pilots have fun, that's when we earn our corn.

So the job, the job in question, we were required to fly

particularly low level, so we were below 200 feet,

using a small scale map, and literally at one point

we were following roads and wires just to try and keep us located.

Particular hazards, 250 foot power lines, etc,

we were flying around at that particular level, so,

you have to be very, very wary, it's an extremely hazardous environment.

Overcoming challenges with the weather,

the search and rescue team have already pulled off

a tricky mountain rescue, but they want to make it two in one day.

The team swiftly hand over the casualty to waiting paramedics.

Lee will be rushed to Carlisle Hospital for treatment in A&E.

But the Royal Navy shift is far from over.

Next they need a weather update,

and the latest from the mountain rescue team already dispatched to the other climber.

Yes.

Right.

Right...

The news from the Search and Rescue Met Office isn't good.

Time to speak to the second mountain rescue team's control HQ.

Hello there.

What's your plan if... cos it's looking...

We've just had a Met update from our weatherman

and it's not looking good on us being able to get inland.

The problem is if the cloud is on the deck all around the coast,

so we need to get in, we need somehow to get inland

and that'll be the difficulty, so, certainly with it cooling,

it's getting worse as well as the night sort of draws in.

More bad weather means there's no choice

but to abort the second rescue.

It's disappointing, but they've learnt that

a 12-man mountain rescue team has now reached the climber.

I've spoken to the MRT base and they've got about a dozen personnel

plus, and some vehicles out on the scene.

They have a back-up plan, they can walk him off, it'll be a long,

slow process, so if we can't make it, all is not lost.

It's been all go for the emergency services in Scotland's rural areas.

The Lakeland climber, Lee,

had an operation on his dislocated shoulder.

He's recovering well and looking forward to reaching his next summit.

June was monitored in hospital overnight

and given the all-clear the next day.

And both suspects detained in the drugs raids were charged

with production and possession of controlled drugs.

A date in court awaits.

And you thought it was quiet in the countryside.

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