Episode 2 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.

Nobody in their right mind

should have attempted to drive through this.

From severe weather and treacherous terrain...

-Is the pain getting worse, do you think?

-Yes.

..to covering huge distances on rural roads

with time against them.

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 hurt and 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 -

emergency services attend a serious road traffic collision

involving a car and a horse-drawn carriage

I looked at where I thought the horses would be

and there was just, at that point, a big bang.

A search and rescue helicopter battles bad weather

to save a man at sea.

And we go out on the slopes with the ski patrol,

as they help two badly injured skiers.

A fifth of the UK population live in the countryside.

In London, there are 12,500 people per square mile,

but here, in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, there are only 60.

People are more thinly spread, and so too are the emergency services.

Traffic cops David Holland and Hazel Smyth

both moved to the area for the wide open spaces.

But with over three million vehicles

travelling through this part of the UK every year,

they're kept busy, especially when the weather turns wintry.

Don't think we'll be standing out here too long.

I'm OK, Dave!

Certainly feels very slippery, you can see it glistening away

and can also hear that the tyre noise goes down as well, on ice.

With today's icy conditions, it's not long before a call

comes in to attend an accident 14 miles away on the A75.

What we think's happened, it's a low loader

and a digger's come off the back of it, so it could be an insecure load.

An accident involving a large vehicle on the main trunk road

running from east to west, can have a huge knock-on effect

to the rush hour traffic, particularly in a rural area

with a network of smaller roads.

We've got the issue now of, the road's going to have to get closed

to recover the digger off the road and the lorry, so...

There it is here.

Looks like what's happened here, he's come round the roundabout maybe

and it's slipped and it's on its side, over there.

An eight-tonne truck has crashed on its side.

Miraculously, no-one is hurt.

It's not good.

Now you see, the problem is, if that had landed on top of a car,

you can see the impact that would have caused.

That would have been a serious RTC.

Hazel tries to establish the likely cause.

What was it secured with?

You know, how many chains, just the two, was it?

Where were the chains on it?

Just snapped, did they?

Who chained it down?

Did you? You put it on the trailer this morning?

Should have been sufficiently strapped down

and it's obviously shifted and one of the chains has snapped

so obviously wasn't enough chains on it

to keep it securely strapped down.

The lorry driver's camera-shy

so Hazel takes him to the front of the vehicle to question him.

In my opinion, I don't think two chains is enough on that.

You know? What do you think?

Right, well something's caused that to come off, obviously.

It's your chains or your speed going round the roundabout.

You can see the problem, if that had landed on top of a car,

that would have been fatal this morning.

It would have been a disaster.

Commercial drivers are responsible

for the safety of their vehicle and cargo.

Around 4,000 people are prosecuted each year

for driving with an unsafe load.

There are no casualties this time,

but if the road had been busier, the eight-tonne truck

falling off the low loader could have had devastating consequences.

Even though it is icy, that chain should have held that, I think.

So it's insecure, it's come off.

I would caution and charge him with that and report it.

-It's up to the court to decide then, isn't it?

-Unsecured load.

David has taken photographs and the broken chain is seized for evidence.

The recovery vehicle moves the truck off the road

so the A75 can be reopened.

The driver will be charged with carrying a dangerous load.

If found guilty, he'll face a fine and points on his licence.

But the day is not over yet.

As Hazel and David near the end of their shift,

they get a 999 call to a major road traffic collision 30 miles away.

This time, there are serious casualties.

We've just obviously been notified about this serious crash.

Excuse me a sec.

There's one person with a potentially serious head injury.

I believe there's a heli-med on its way.

In rural Britain, search and rescue helicopters

play a vital role in serving isolated communities miles apart

and often in hard-to-reach places.

Prestwick Airport is home to HMS Gannet's Search And Rescue Team.

They cover an area of 98,000 square miles...

..from Northern Ireland to the Lake District

and up to the top of Scotland.

Training is a crucial part of their routine,

especially for co-pilots like Craig "Sweenos" Sweeney,

who must guide the massive Sea King helicopter

in challenging conditions.

Helicopters don't normally fly under obstacles, they fly over them.

But certain rescue or weather situations require the crews

to undergo dangerous under-flying manoeuvres.

Navigating difficult obstacles in low cloud like the Erskine Bridge

gives the crew crucial skills

they can apply to real emergency situations.

The crew have only 60 feet clearance

to fly the ten-tonne Sea King helicopter under the Erskine Bridge.

RADIO CHATTER

They've made it.

It's just as well all search and rescue teams are trained

for these low flying situations, as another HMS Gannet crew

soon have to put these very skills to the test when they answer

a 999 call to rescue a man overboard in the North Sea.

Back in Dumfriesshire, traffic cops Hazel Smyth and David Holland

are nearing the end of their shift.

They've cleared an accident from a busy A road

after a truck fell off a low loader.

Now they're blue-lighting to the scene

of a serious road traffic collision.

We've been sent to a call to a serious crash,

just on the other side of Dumfries

so it's about 30 miles away from where we are at the moment.

Hazel must navigate 30 miles of icy, country roads, in an area

with the second highest rate of road accidents in the whole of the UK.

On the way, PC David Holland gets a worrying update.

Basically, it was one person with a potentially serious head injury.

I believe there's a heli-med on its way.

There are five people involved, but they're not the only casualties.

There's actually been two horses involved in the accident,

so they're just calling out a vet for the horses at the moment.

Think they've been injured too.

The news goes from bad to worse.

That's it confirmed, obviously, by the ambulance staff

that it's a potential fatality, so...

I'd imagine there's going to be some accident investigators called out

and the road'll be shut for quite some time.

When they arrive at the scene,

the extent of the collision becomes clear.

There's the helicopter.

But this accident is not between two cars.

It involves a car and a horse-drawn carriage

carrying a bride and her father to her wedding.

We've got a horse cart, there was two folk guiding it,

two in the back. It's been hit by one car, one driver.

Four injured, one with a serious head injury.

When we first arrived,

there was obviously damage to the carriage, it was on its side.

Horses had been injured. Extensive damage to the motorist's vehicle.

Our first fear is,

how bad are these injuries?

Four ambulance crews are tending to the casualties.

The air ambulance is on standby

as the carriage driver has sustained life-threatening injuries.

The driver of the cart who sits up the front of it,

he's got knocked off, and he's been hurled metres away from it,

so at the moment, it's a potential fatal

but we don't know the full extent of the injuries just yet.

Later, Simon, the driver of the carriage,

is blue-lit to hospital with serious head injuries.

Simon kept shouting at me,

"Have I got the horses off, have I got the horses off?"

What you want to do is to get down on your hands and knees

and make sure your husband is breathing.

The Royal Navy Search And Rescue Team faces a dilemma

when they rush to save a man from drowning at sea.

But first we join the ski patrol

protecting visitors to the slopes of the Cairngorms.

One third of Scotland's landscape is made up of mountains like these.

They attract millions of visitors each year from all over the world.

But these mountains can be treacherous playgrounds.

They give the emergency services massive challenges

when rescues need to be carried out.

As environments go, it doesn't get much tougher than this.

The Cairngorm Mountain Ski Centre is Britain's busiest ski resort.

Every year, around a quarter of a million people visit this mountain.

And keeping them all safe are the Cairngorm ski patrollers.

Specially trained first aid responders

and skilled skiers on call to rescue people from the slopes.

In freezing temperatures, the ski patrol team's priority

is to get their casualties safely off the mountain.

We'll be seeing you back soon.

On shift today is 25-year-old Justine Stewart.

She started here as a volunteer

and has been a full-time ski patroller for two years.

The conditions are very changeable here,

so we could come up and it could be very still,

and then maybe within a couple of hours

we could have 60-70 mile per hour winds.

So it's very changeable, you've got be very adaptable.

A call comes in.

A 16-year-old skier has injured herself in a fall

on an intermediate ski run.

Justine and colleague Nancy set off.

It's crucial to get the injured girl Vicky off the mountain

as fast as possible.

Temperatures can drop to minus 18 on the mountain,

so hypothermia is an added risk

for casualties who may already be in shock.

When the rescue team arrive, Vicky is in a lot of pain

and unable to stand.

I don't know what happened, but I was just skiing down,

and I felt it just go and that's when I fell over.

Right, did it go before you fell?

Yeah, and I landed on it and I tried to walk then,

and I couldn't put any weight on it at all.

You're doing really well.

Justine suspects Vicky may have torn a ligament or dislocated her knee,

so, once bandaged, it's secured with an inflatable splint.

So what I'll do, I'll put the straps on, OK, and then I'll start

to mould it around your knee, and then we can take the air out.

Then you'll feel much more comfortable.

How does that feel, does that feel it's supporting it there?

Sore, though.

Going to go quite tight, Vicky, cos I don't want this moving.

-How's that doing?

-Yeah, that's good.

They must get Vicky off the mountain and down the 600 metres

to the treatment room in the base station.

Push up with your arms, and try and get your bum onto the sledge.

The first part of her descent

is on one of the ski patrol's specially designed sledges.

Well done, Vicky, that's awesome.

It's not the most comfortable of rides.

OK. Thanks, Nance!

The ski patrol take the sledge as far as they can...

..then transfer Vicky onto the mountain funicular.

On three. One, two, three.

Let's go straight in here.

It looks a lot worse than it is.

At the base, it's a team effort to get Vicky into the treatment room.

-OK, Vicky?

-Watch the door.

You're being very brave.

Nice warm room.

Her injury means she'll need to go to hospital for an X-ray.

She's twisted it, she said she felt it pop.

What we might do is, we might get an ambulance for you

because of the pain. Does that sound OK?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

Vicky's dad has arrived.

We don't really know what's going on inside the knee,

but going by the pain, it's pretty intense.

-My ski didn't come off.

-Didn't it?

-No.

That was what the problem was. The ski didn't come off.

We were thinking of an ambulance.

Seems a shame to tie up an ambulance.

To save calling out an ambulance,

he offers to drive her the one-hour journey to hospital.

Would you keep the splint on it?

Yeah, I don't want to move it at all, basically.

Slowly, slowly.

Have you got that side?

Safely strapped into her dad's car,

Vicky can head to hospital for an X-ray

to confirm the extent of damage.

And Justine's first aid skills are required again

when a skier runs over a snowboarder and slashes his wrist.

We need to see the extent of this bleeding, OK?

The HMS Gannet Search And Rescue Teams cover a massive area

to reach people in remote locations.

They train hard to negotiate

all kinds of severe weather conditions in real call-outs.

Today, the four-strong crew, led by observer Angela Lewis,

are responding to a life-and-death situation

to rescue a man in the sea.

A 999 call has reported a person in the Firth of Forth Estuary,

north of Edinburgh.

It's 45 minutes away and every second counts.

Cold water means a high risk of hypothermia

so the nearest hospital in Edinburgh has been put on standby.

If the casualty is in the water,

winchman Andy Firth will be lowered down to rescue them.

In preparation, Andy puts on his immersion suit.

Meantime, the weather is closing in.

And low cloud is bad news for helicopters.

It's raining.

The cloud base is at 180 feet, so visibility's poor,

making terrible conditions to carry out a rescue.

They must fly under the cloud at around 50 feet,

following the River Forth to guide them.

As they get closer,

the ominous sight electricity pylons appears in front of them.

The low cloud means they can't fly over the pylons.

But these cables carry 275,000 volts.

If the rotor blades touch them, it's certain death for the crew,

making this an even riskier manoeuvre

than flying under a bridge.

With a casualty in open water and the clock ticking,

it's decision time for the crew.

Avoiding the cables would mean a 15-minute detour.

It was one of the poorest conditions weather-wise that day,

and everyone's ante is upped

when it's a person in the water.

The difference of seconds

could be life or death to somebody in the water.

With someone's life at risk, the decision is made to go under.

The pylons are looming ahead, but will they make it?

130 miles south-west,

the police are still on the scene of a serious road accident.

A car has crashed into a horse-drawn carriage

carrying a bride and her father to her wedding.

Their horse-drawn carriage has been heading towards a nearby hotel

for a wedding reception and it's been in collision with a car.

Four people from the carriage are injured,

one of them seriously injured,

and we're just carrying out investigations just now

to see exactly what's happened.

Four ambulance crews are tending to the casualties.

The air ambulance is on standby as the carriage driver, Simon,

is critically injured.

He was flung metres in the air and landed on the road.

Given the severity of his injuries,

the paramedics decide it's safer to make the five-mile trip to hospital

by ambulance, rather than moving Simon into the helicopter.

PC David Holland will provide a police escort

to get them there faster, in case his condition deteriorates.

When you think about horse-drawn carriages,

you don't tend to think of them as being particularly sturdy things.

So you do tend to think the worst when you're going to these things.

Simon's wife Zoe was driving the bridesmaids by car to the wedding.

He wanted me to stay and sort the horses, but then...

She witnessed the accident first-hand.

I turned round and there was a...

I looked at where I thought the horses would be

and there was just, at that point,

a big bang, and I start to run up the road

and the carriage and the car are still coming down the road

towards me, as I'm running up.

By this time, the carriage has now made a full flip back over itself.

Simon was actually coming through the air, and had landed

on the road, so I'm shouting for Simon as I'm running up the road.

Simon's horrific injuries meant he was in and out of consciousness.

Despite that, he was still concerned about the horses.

Simon kept shouting at me, "Have I got the horses off,

"have I got the horses off?"

Because if they got loose or if something happened,

they're big animals, they're heavy animals, and they could go on

to cause either another accident or cause more damage to what was there.

I had to make sure that they were under control

when all you want to do is to get down on your hands and knees

and make sure your husband is breathing.

The car driver has escaped uninjured,

but all the occupants of the carriage -

the bride, her father,

Simon the carriage driver and his daughter Hannah,

who was sitting up front with her dad, have been taken to hospital.

The serious nature of this collision calls for a joint effort

between the emergency services and the different police divisions.

On their way to help are PCs Matt Tate and Stuart Rae.

Their role is to divert traffic away from the incident.

We'll do it.

Oscar 5-30 Bravo Three, we'll come across from Beeswing,

come in the top end, over.

'Roger, you'll find we're looking for the road to be closed off.'

Yeah, Roger.

We're going to come in from the top end of the accident

and close the road from there, cos traffic's building up.

Council's been contacted, they'll put diversions in.

On such a network of narrow roads,

it's important that traffic keeps moving to stop tailbacks,

and to give the emergency services clear routes

to get the injured to hospital.

Roger, that's us, we've now shut the road off.

South of your location, we'll direct traffic up the Ockham Road. Over.

Before any vehicles can be removed,

the accident investigation team must examine the scene

to find out exactly what happened.

Just the one in there. Just the one person in the car,

four in the carriage. The boy's been tubed and he's OK.

The officers check the damage to the car and the carriage

for signs of what caused the collision.

You see in the front of the car,

you see a mark down the offside of the radiator.

The full length of the radiator.

There's a mark from the top right to the bottom.

It's obviously caused a crease in the bumper as well.

It's my opinion at this time that the mark on the radiator

has actually been caused by this wheel here.

At this moment in time, I think the vehicle was travelling

fully on its own side of the road, and it would appear to have

just driven directly into the rear of the carriage.

I'm advised at the time of the crash,

albeit it's just over an hour since the crash now,

at the time of the crash there was a really low bright sun,

which I think at this time may have contributed to the cause of the crash.

In rural Britain,

the emergency services have to cover bigger distances

and more difficult terrain than their counterparts in the cities.

And there are few more challenging environments

than Cairngorm Mountain.

It's a busy Saturday, with over a thousand skiers

and snowboarders on the mountain.

Ski Patroller Justine Stewart is checking the slopes...

Guys, can you get off the track?

..when an emergency call comes in about a snowboarder

who's been run over by a skier and been badly cut.

21-year-old Eric is bleeding heavily from a cut

which could have severed a main artery in his wrist.

Incredibly, a passing skier, who's a nurse, stopped to help.

She's tourniqueted his wrist with bandages

to try and stop the blood flow.

If he has cut an artery,

this first aid could mean the difference between life and death.

We need to see the extent of this bleeding, OK?

It'll be very quick, but cos the tourniquet's off, we need to see.

Nancy carefully removes the bandage and discovers a deep laceration.

There was a collision with another skier and, as a result,

the other skier had skied over his wrist,

so the ski edge had actually cut into him.

Another ski patroller arrives with a sledge

and extra bandages to stop the bleeding.

Dave, have you got an ambulance dressing on you?

-Yeah, just in the top there.

-Cool.

What we're going to do is take you down to the bottom,

-and get you into the warm.

-OK. Perfect.

How are you feeling about an ambulance?

Eric's putting on a brave face, but the team need to get him

off the hill and down to the base station as quickly as possible.

We're going to get him into the warm and make a better assessment.

After a bumpy ride, the pain is getting worse.

Paramedics are en route.

Meanwhile, Nancy and Justine need to keep Eric as stable as possible.

Are you feeling OK? You're not feeling faint or anything, are you?

The bleeding won't stop, so more pressure's put on his wrist.

Eric, there's nothing that we can do here cos it's quite deep.

We can't stitch you up just now,

but we can just stop the bleeding, which will be good for you.

In the city, an ambulance might take minutes to be on the scene,

but here in the Cairngorms, it can take up to an hour.

The amount of blood loss there, and the speed at which the blood

was coming out, we were getting a bit concerned.

As they play the waiting game for the ambulance,

Eric's also getting worried.

Can we be perfectly honest here?

Am I, is this going to be OK?

Are you jiggling about because of the pain

or are you jiggling about cos you're cold?

No, I'm jiggling about because of the pain.

You're doing really well.

Might not feel like it, but you are.

Eric is stable, but both Nancy and Justine

know that he can't afford to lose much more blood.

So that's a really good sign that you can still move your fingers.

Still clench Nancy's finger.

That's really good. We like that.

Keep it that way.

The ambulance paramedics arrive and take over from ski patrol.

-Can you feel your finger tips wiggling?

-Yeah.

Move your fingers and all that?

It's totally fine, we'll have a look and see what we're going to do.

Try and make yourself look hard on TV.

Eric's best mate Ryan sees for himself

just how sharp the ski that cut Eric was.

Straight through the glove, like.

We're supposed to be going out to a 21st tonight,

but I don't think it'll be happening.

The paramedics take Eric by ambulance

to the local medical centre ten miles away

to get the bleeding stopped

and the full extent of his injuries assessed.

Back in the east of Scotland,

the Royal Navy's Search And Rescue Team

are responding to an emergency call in the Firth of Forth.

A 999 call reported seeing a person in the sea.

With someone at risk from drowning,

the crew are trying to get there as quickly as they can.

Right, OK, over these wires, there's the bridge.

But electricity pylons are across their most direct route.

Bypassing them would delay the rescue by 15 minutes.

With someone's life in danger, it's time they can't afford.

Thick cloud is above them.

They've no option but to fly under the 275,000-volt cables.

Arriving at those wires, realising there was no way

we could go over the top,

we elected to conduct quite a dangerous evolution

that we do train for,

but I've never had to put it in practice that way before,

and there are not many other call-outs

that we would have pushed on, beyond somebody who could be drowning.

As the cables dip in the middle,

they must fly close to the pylons to get under.

OK, you are well below.

You've got about 15 foot to the wires now.

About 10-15 foot below.

Centre of the cab's coming under the wires now.

Height's good, hold only.

Relieved all's gone to plan,

they head straight to the man in the water.

But minutes after going under the cables, they get some shocking news.

With police and a lifeboat also involved,

they must continue the search until the call is confirmed as a hoax.

After searching for 20 minutes,

a call comes in to confirm their suspicions.

This hoax mission has been very costly.

But, more importantly, it's put the crew in real danger.

Call is being treated as a hoax, and we're going to route

to Edinburgh now for refuel before returning home.

Rescue 177, Aberdeen coastguard, over.

177, go ahead.

It's been a dangerous exercise that's wasted crucial resources.

While the police try to track down the hoax caller,

there's nothing to do but return back to base.

It's now nearly six weeks after the accident involving a car

and a horse-drawn carriage, taking a bride and her father to her wedding.

Worst hurt in the collision was Simon the carriage driver.

He was thrown metres from the carriage,

hitting his head on the road.

The driver of the cart, who sits up the front of it,

he's got knocked off.

At the moment, it's a potential fatal

but we don't know the full extent of the injuries just yet.

When he was taken to hospital, the extent of his injuries

put him in a life or death situation.

At that first point, when you realise that a car has hit them,

and my first flash image was of Simon, in the air,

and the back end of the carriage, up in the air,

and the horses are going backwards.

That is the mental image that I've got, and it's that

oh-my-God moment, that you think when your heart stops.

He'd injured his right elbow, back, four ribs,

collarbone and shoulder blade.

His head and face were battered and bruised, needing 15 stitches.

He was in hospital for 12 days

and has now made a miraculous recovery.

But the memories are still very raw.

All I could feel was this, this cold and I was shivering,

and I remember shivering very badly,

to the point that it was scary,

shivering so badly.

And it was possibly, I was either at that point or after that point,

or during the travel to the hospital

was when I became unconscious and then I stopped breathing.

And at some point then, I was resuscitated.

So I'm not sure, you know, people talk about shock

and going into shock and certainly for me

that was quite a scary moment.

And to look back and see myself lying in hospital there,

with my eyes all closed and not being able to see anything,

is quite shocking.

And think, you know,

how did my good looks return?

While Simon was recovering in hospital,

he picked up a newspaper and was shocked by what he saw.

To see in the paper that here was the carriage,

and there was a car and I'm thinking, "My God, that was us."

"That was me. Did I take part in that, did I do that?"

and I had nobody around me

to actually say, you know,

"It wasn't your fault."

And I kept going back to the page, and I kept looking at that picture

thinking, "My God, we got out of that."

Simon's two horses, Hobo and Hebe, were also injured,

but they too have made a good recovery.

This is Hebe.

Who's a seven-year-old Irish draught cross mare.

She's one of my best horses that I've ever trained from the start

and she's a real veteran now of over 600 weddings.

When the carriage tumbled down the road,

she was the one that got thrown up in the air the highest,

and the furthest, and landed with quite a bang.

And this is Hobo.

Hobo got thrown to the side and he tumbled down the road.

He was then left lying underneath it and he supported

the weight of the carriage with the bride and her father inside.

Zoe and Simon's daughter Hannah was also thrown from the carriage.

She was kept in hospital over the weekend.

I remember being quite cold.

And Zoe came and spoke to me and said that we'd been in an accident,

and then the two paramedics came and seen me,

put me in the ambulance.

Zoe came and spoke to me in the ambulance,

and then I was taken to hospital. That's all I remember.

It was amazing how the police officers took control

and it's a great feeling to know that somebody else was there

to help me, and then when the ambulances arrived, and actually,

you know, you almost take a back seat and people, you could see them.

You know, they're doing the best

and the paramedics that were helping Simon initially just kept saying,

"He's going to be fine.

"Just you do what you need to do, he's going to be fine."

The father of the bride was also kept in hospital

but with his blessing, his daughter went ahead and got married that day.

You know, to see that the bride got married a few hours later,

then the realisation that, you know,

I got her...

nineteen twentieths of the way.

So, somebody else took her the last little bit.

So, no, I didn't feel so bad then. But I got her most of the way,

so I was proud that I got her most of the way.

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

The Royal Navy Search And Rescue Team

endangered their lives for the sake of a hoax call.

Skier Vicky had dislocated her knee.

She's now recovering with a knee brace and physiotherapy.

Eric's snow sports injury needed surgery to repair three tendons

and a severed vein.

Thanks to his glove, the ski narrowly missed his artery

and probably saved his life.

Despite their ordeal, Simon and his horses are recovering well.

It's hoped they'll be back on the road soon.

And you thought it was quiet in the countryside.

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