Episode 3 Countryside 999

From the Highlands of Scotland to the coast of Cornwall,

the Great British countryside is spectacular.

But we work and play in it at our peril.

And when things go wrong,

the emergency services race to the rescue...

This chap is having a heart attack and we need to get him in quickly.

There's no police courses for this!

..going hundreds of miles against the clock,

battling the elements and braving the weather.

From fields and forests to cliffs and country roads,

we'll be right at the heart of the action...

-..with police fighting crime.

-I could seize your dog,

I could seize your van. But I'm going to summons you all to court.

Paramedics saving lives...

..and wardens safeguarding our lakes.

Come out of the way!

We're there as the emergency services pull together

to pick up, patch up, and protect the public.

This is Countryside 999.

Coming up, the Durham police pull an all-nighter

when they go hunting for poachers.

I'm going to seize that lamp, with that battery.

Could seize your dog, could seize your van, but I'm not.

But I'm going to summons you all to court.

A seriously burned camper desperately in need

of attention proves difficult to find.

And another shocking fire at Windermere has tragic consequences.

There's a heck of a lot of fire and black smoke.

Cornwall is Britain's most popular holiday destination

and a greatest hits of the British coastline.

It's a surfer's paradise with family friendly beaches...

..lovers' coves and high, challenging cliffs.

But head inland and 80% of Cornwall's landscape

is rolling farmland, dotted with remote farms,

linked by the odd B-road.

Getting around Cornwall fast isn't easy, unless you've got a chopper.

The Cornwall Air Ambulance has flown over 24,000 missions

and saved countless lives

by dramatically cutting down travel time across the county.

Mick McLaughlin has been part of the team for eight years.

Before that he was an air paramedic in London.

'They're very similar roles.

'The difference here is mostly down to the geography.'

It is a big county so we're having to travel further to get to

patients and then having to travel further to get those patients

to definitive care.

It's a male I take it, H? OK. Right, we're on our way.

An emergency call has come in.

Right. We've got a job just the other side of Falmouth

and it's someone whose gas cylinders have exploded.

Apparently he's got burns to his face.

The crew is not there yet so we don't really know the severity at all.

From Newquay, the crew will fly 25 miles south to the

Helford River estuary, where the patient is in a remote field.

For calls like this, speed is of the essence.

When we get a call like this, you know,

with reports of someone having a gas canister explode

right in the vicinity of their face, it does raise alarm bells for us.

They'll be there in 15 minutes, way before the land ambulance.

With burns it's essential to have the right kit.

Lead paramedic Steve Garvey has come prepared.

According to the grid reference, they've arrived.

We were expecting to sort of see an industrial accident on a farm.

When we got overhead the grid reference,

we actually found what appeared to be a campsite.

A field cleared of livestock isn't the usual description of a campsite.

And in the confusion, they are losing precious time.

All those minutes that it takes finding a patient can be

the difference between, you know, recovering well or having long-term

injuries and can potentially mean the difference between life and death.

'As we were orbiting, we identified the scorch marks on the ground.'

They land just metres away from the patient.

-Hello there.

-Hiya.

-Hello there, sir.

-Hello.

-What's your name, sir?

-Alan.

-Hello, Alan. I'm Mick.

71-year-old Alan's friend Janine is a former nurse.

How long have you been cooling it down for?

We've probably been pouring water as long as he could manage,

-which is about 10 minutes.

-OK, ideal. Thank you.

Janine poured litres of cold water over the burns, limiting their pain.

And how are you feeling now, Alan? Pain wise? Obviously uncomfortable.

Mick needs to find out what caused the burns.

-What was it? Just a sort of Calor gas cylinder or something?

-Yeah.

And the whole thing exploded or just flared up?

The flaring camping gas cylinder has acted like a blowtorch.

The much heat to Alan's face could have a serious

effect on his breathing.

Obviously, the things we worry about - your airway.

'Any burns to the face, you know, we risk an airway injury.

'It's a very delicate tissue inside the mouth and the nose'

and you can get a huge amount of swelling very quickly.

He has got a bit of a burn here but not inside his mouth.

Yes, no. Looking a nice, normal colour.

-Alan's airway is clear.

-You're looking nice and clean.

If I asked you to give the pain a score out of ten,

ten being the worst you could imagine, zero being nothing,

what's the score it as at the moment?

So quite significant. OK.

We'll get the pain sorted out for you in a moment.

Although Alan won't appreciate it,

the fact that he is scoring his pain high is good news.

'The more severe burns often aren't painful'

because they'll destroy the nerve endings as well.

But it's those superficial and partial thickness burns

that can be extremely painful.

We're just going to wrap your burns in a bit of clingfilm.

That will stop the air getting to them.

The clingfilm will act as a temporary skin,

covering Alan's exposed nerve endings.

But Alan is going into shock. He's starting to hyperventilate.

It is a heart-wrenching ordeal for Alan's family.

The paramedics must ease his pain before they can move him.

What we've got here is some gas and air.

Take some nice, deep breaths for me. That's it. Just like that.

You can just breathe out normally and just keep sucking it in.

But gas and air isn't enough.

While Alan's in this much pain, he's going nowhere.

County Durham in the north of England.

A beautiful part of the world,

once famous for its mining and heavy industry.

Now the landscape and way of life is mostly rural.

Nearly 1,000 square miles of agricultural land,

woods and shady valleys are criss-crossed with winding lanes.

Beautiful by day but at night,

it provides the perfect cover for crime.

The Durham Constabulary police every nook and cranny

of their patch, 24/7.

Officer Kevin Hall has been with the Derwentside team for ten years.

I think, for me, joining the police,

there was an element of serving the communities,

being able to go out there and make a difference to people's lives,

being able to find out what their problems are and resolving them

for them as best as I can.

At their headquarters in Consett,

the team are preparing for a night patrol.

Marked patrols and unmarked patrols predominantly in the Lanchester area.

That's due to an increase of rural crime.

Rural crime costs the British economy over £40 million a year.

And it's rising.

Burglaries, straightforward thefts and also poaching and hunting

offences within Lanchester and a little bit further afield.

On Kevin's beat, poaching is a real problem.

The aim of our operation was just to go out and catch some poachers.

Simple as that.

But poachers are notoriously difficult to catch.

Tonight the team are travelling from Consett to patrol

the Lanchester area.

Poachers hunt for all sorts of game, including deer and rabbit,

for pleasure and for money.

They hunt with dogs and guns on other people's land

and in County Durham, there's a lot of land to police.

It's 10 o'clock and a call comes in.

Did she give any sort of direction of where they were going?

Just into the fields?

Just got a call from a lady who has been out walking her dogs

who stated she's seen some males walking with some lurchers,

possibly a deer in the area and heard a popping noise,

which may have been an air weapon going off or a rifle.

So we're just going to go down now

and have a look around in the area to see if we can trace these lads

with the dogs and see if we can catch them up to no good, really.

It's an ancient crime, but these days, poachers use modern tactics.

Gangs communicate with each other to stay one step ahead of the police.

Just seen some faint lights.

They weren't car lights because they weren't bright enough

so we're just going to try and head across to where the lights came from.

They use powerful lamps to spot and stun animals

but it's the air guns and rifles Kevin's concerned about.

Because it's dark and there is a firearm potentially involved,

chances are you might get shot,

although it might be by accident and they might be doing it on purpose

to try and scare us away so probably look from the outside initially.

Poachers, above all, like to stay hidden.

-Is there any cattle in here?

-No, there's no cattle.

You should be able to open the cake and get through the kissing gate.

This is known locally as Plantation but we're only - what? -

50 metres away from the houses.

So if the lads know that there's a deer in the area,

if they've seen it during the day, they'll come out once it's dark

with the dogs and try and track it down

and try and get the dogs to chase it and attack it and bring it down.

But it is that dark, you can't even see what's about.

There's no torchlight about so I think they're probably well gone.

Unfortunately this time we've missed them.

It's Poachers 1, Coppers 0.

To be honest, we don't catch as many as we would like.

But the night is still young.

On the Helford River estuary in Cornwall,

air ambulance paramedics are treating 71-year-old Alan

after a camping accident.

A gas cylinder has flared up,

causing severe burns to his face, arms and legs.

Take some nice, deep breaths for me.

Air paramedic Mick McLaughlin was first on the scene.

It became clear quickly with this gentleman that actually this

is a matter of pain management rather than life-threatening injuries.

They are the painful burns but they leave the least damage.

So it's uncomfortable because it exposes nerve endings.

-So we just wanted control your pain this way.

-OK. Yes.

Gas and air isn't strong enough...

..so Mick resource to morphine to ease Alan's pain.

So, if I just take your arm...

What we'll do, we will give it a few minutes

because it takes a few minutes to get working,

and then we can top you up.

-The morphine takes effect. So they start to move Alan.

-Right.

We'll get you on a stretcher, Alan.

We are just going to roll you slightly towards me.

-OK. Roll us up.

-There we go.

We're going to gently lower you back and you'll be slightly offset

so we're then going to have to slide you over to the middle.

-That's it. That's it, lovely.

-Yeah.

Right. How is the pain at the moment?

-Do you need any more?

-Not so bad. Not so bad.

-I'm going to keep asking that same question.

-Keep on.

-Seven to eight.

-OK. We'll give you a little bit more.

Alan, are you feeling cold or is this shivering, do you think,

-as a result, of sheer terror?

-I think it's...

-No, I don't feel cold actually. I don't feel cold.

-OK.

We'll get you into the warm in a moment.

We're going round to the far side of the helicopter,

there's a plinth sticking out the side,

and we're just going to lift him feet first.

OK. Ready, set, lift.

-There we go.

-Thank you, everybody.

So what am I in right now? What is it?

-It's a EC 135 helicopter.

-OK.

OK, here we go.

-Cornwall Air Ambulance, we are.

-Yeah.

Here we go.

We're going to try some IV paracetamol in a minute as well,

more effective than normal paracetamol.

Hopefully the two combined will start to kick in your pain.

We're going to get your blood pressure

and stuff before we lift and that will help us

make a decision where we going to land at the hospital.

'With the treatment of burns, there are a few options -

'whether to go to the nearest hospital,'

whether to go to a regional burns unit.

With the specialist burns unit a 40 minute flight away

and Alan in so much pain, Mick opts for the much shorter hop

to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.

Paul, we're just about to lift from scene en route

to Truro for direct lending. We haven't got a signal down here,

so if you could pass on the details when you're ready, over.

Go ahead, over.

It is quite a scary concept, you know, you can be happily

camping one minute and then the next minute,

effectively a small bomb goes off in your face.

-We're just at the hospital now, Alan, OK?

-Yes.

We're going to be on the ground within one minute.

Barriers are down.

We've just taken about seven or eight minutes to get to hospital,

Alan, and that was probably about a 50 minute journey by road.

Yes, I appreciate that.

We've managed to shave off 40 minutes of travelling time there.

-Thanks for coming.

-Not a problem.

It's a pleasure, it's what we're here for.

Alan's quickly wheeled into the resuscitation unit.

He's in the right place for now...

..but he's not out of the woods yet.

Windermere in Cumbria has long been the beating heart

of the Lake District...

..forever linked to poets and painters stunned by the landscape.

Over 2,500 boats are moored on Windermere, sharing the lake

with water sports enthusiasts...

and the busiest pleasure cruisers

in England, ferrying around a million and a half visitors a year.

It's England's biggest, most beautiful lake...

..but all the activity breeds danger.

No-one knows this better than the district council's lake wardens.

Often first on scene,

they're a vital link to police,

fire and ambulance services 365 days a year.

Steve Phelps has been protecting people on

and around the lake for the past two decades.

I must admit when I first joined the job it was a case of,

"Well, it would be great to swan about in summer o a boat and mooch

"up and down Windermere if there's not a lot to do."

How wrong can you be, really?

The job is so diverse,

you never know what you're going to face from one day to another.

Just a few minutes into his shift, Steve gets a call.

I've just a message from the foot passenger ferry

at Fell Foot down at the south end of the lake.

There's a 30-foot yacht which was on the jetty that the ferry uses,

was asked to move, has reversed out from the jetty

and has now got stuck in the shallows.

So we've got a 30-foot yacht blocking all the jetties at Fell Foot,

people on board the yacht, so I'm just going to nip down now

and find out what the situation is.

A yacht blocking the jetties won't just play havoc with

the ferry service, it'll send other traffic off-course

and into dangerously busy water.

Normally Fell Foot's quite busy at this time of the year

so there could be quite a lot of people around down there,

especially in the water, and we usually get a lot of children

and things swimming around about that area.

Steve's boat is capable of up to 40 knots -

fast enough to get him

the four miles to Fell Foot in under six minutes.

You get a great buzz when you get out there -

big, powerful boat travelling at speed down the lake

responding to an incident, brain cells are ticking over trying

to decide what you're going to do when you get there.

It's putting all that training that you've had into...into practice.

Over the last five years,

the wardens have dealt with over 1,100 incidents.

14 of those were fatalities.

The problem here seems to have fixed itself.

OK. As long as you're free and everybody is all right, no injuries.

Nearly at the end of the season!

Right, we've...

We've rescued this lady before.

She's obviously managed to get it free herself this time.

End of the day, nobody's injured,

boat's safe and you've got your jetty back.

On an average year,

we have approximately 300 incidents reported on our database.

That can be anything from noticing that a boat

is in danger of coming off its mooring

because the equipment is faulty right the way through to

full-blown rescues including boat fires

and people having heart attacks or major medical emergencies on boats.

It's just a few hours before another call comes in.

Just had a call that there's been a loud explosion

and a pillar of black smoke in the north end of the lake

so we're just going to go out there now and find out what's happening.

The original call for the incident was that there had been

a loud explosion and we had no location for this incident.

We didn't know whether it was on the water on the shoreline.

The information came from a boat on the other side of the lake,

so we don't know exactly what's happening

but I'm going to go and find out now.

Just going to alert these people that we're on our way through.

SIREN BLARES

From over a mile away, Steve sees just how serious this incident is.

Right in front of us at the moment there's a large plume of dark smoke.

INDISTINCT VOICE ON RADIO

Yeah, it's the house just north of Brockhole.

From what I'm being told by somebody,

it was caused by a firework display

but there's a heck of a lot of fire,

as in flames and black smoke.

At the moment, there are still fireworks going off.

I'm not sure whether that's because of the fire

or whether that's actually part of the plan.

I'm just going to see if I can land and go and establish what's going on.

It's a very strange time of day to have a firework display,

but there again, you never know.

Just going to see what's happening, but I'm going to...

I'm going to get off the boat and go and have a look.

It's clearly not just a fireworks display - this fire is severe.

-RADIO:

-If you do need the fire brigade, just give us a yell.

Yeah, roger, it's the...

It's behind the big house that they are building.

The reason we went as close to the fire as we did was to see

if there was anybody up there who needed assistance.

FIREWORKS BANG

I don't know if you can hear that,

but that's the fireworks going off again.

It's a very worrying sight.

There's a large marquee which I can just see.

It looks like maybe Fire Brigade are here at the moment.

Go ahead, Steve.

Yeah, for info, it is a fire

and Fire Brigade are already on scene, over.

Because the professionals are here, there's nothing we can do.

We're just going to go make our way back to the boat

then leave the professionals to it. We'll stay out of the way.

This could well be a wedding party gone wrong.

It seems like the fire service are now getting it under control.

Five firefighting crews fought the blaze for over four hours, one of

the worst ever seen on the shores of Windermere, and it ended in tragedy.

-NEWSREADER:

-The police and fire service were called to the fire

in the grounds of a large house in Ecclerigg

just after 3:30 yesterday afternoon.

Two bodies, thought to be those of a man and a woman, were found.

In a shed containing fireworks. Emergency services were called.

The flames were ferocious and according to those who

witnessed the scene, the explosions were deafening.

And when the flames were extinguished,

this was the scene of devastation -

the shed that had been used to store fireworks reduced to ash.

The next day,

Steve is patrolling the approach to the scene of the blaze.

Since we attended here yesterday,

we've had it confirmed that unfortunately

two people lost their lives in the explosion

and the subsequent fire yesterday.

It's one male and one female.

It's a tragedy.

Yesterday, somebody came to work and hadn't gone home yesterday evening.

Obviously something like that happens and you spend a little

bit of time thinking about things and in reflection,

it's nothing that we could have done to avoid that situation.

There was nothing that we could do to help the situation when we got there.

The unfortunate thing is that somebody's sadly lost their life.

We're all human and it does make you realise that we're all

vulnerable to things that can happen that are beyond our control.

In County Durham, PC Kevin Hall and team are out late hunting poachers.

It's that dark you can't even see what's...what's about.

There's no torch light around so I think they've probably well gone.

So far, the poachers are winning.

We're trying to get the poachers stopped where we can,

operations like this when we come out and about.

But they're on the tail of three suspicious men with dogs.

What we could find is just a car parked up in one of the lay-bys

and then people are off in the field doing...

committing poaching offences and they've tucked their car

into some lay-by hoping it's not going to be spotted.

Though it's not only poachers who skulk around at night.

Especially in the picnic area car park,

you quite often come across courting couples of some description or other.

So yeah, that can be a bit of an embarrassing moment,

but I'm sure they're more embarrassed than we are.

But it's someone else's night that's about to be spoiled.

One of the other patrol cars has called in.

One of the officers just shouted up saying that he's stopped

a blue transit van with some males in and dogs.

It's ten to one in the morning.

PC Russ Booth is questioning the suspects.

I saw an unmarked vehicle with three young lads sat in the front.

Immediately, that arouses my suspicion -

what are they doing in the area at this time of night?

They have three lurcher dogs in the van.

Originally bred for hunting, they're a popular choice for poachers.

-They all right, the dogs?

-Mind stepping out the light?

Just watch it, like.

So you just drive a bit with your dogs and the van? Looking for what?

Somewhere to walk.

-Somewhere to walk?

-Actually, we haven't been anywhere proper,

like, we've just been driving around.

Most poachers are prosecuted for trespassing in the pursuit

of game, so these lads are keen to point out that they haven't been

on anyone's land.

I believe you've probably been on land

or that you were going to be going on land,

and let the dogs off to catch whatever they come across, right?

We'll be submitting some intelligence to that effect,

that that's what you were doing.

Kevin is looking for evidence of poaching.

You got any lamps or owt on you?

No?

-You got owt in your pocket?

-No.

Keys, phone.

What's in the front of the vehicle, owt?

Up front, Kevin discovers two suspicious handheld lights.

These are for poaching, for lamping...

Lamping anything from foxes, deers, rabbit, hares...

Which are obviously high-powered, so they can either shine them

from the fan or they'll just walk through the fields and shine them

at any animals that come around and then they'll...

Once they've been gazed, the animals in the light of the torch,

then they'll set the dogs on them and the dogs

will chase it and hunt it down.

Looks like the evidence is piling up.

-So you've been out poaching then?

-No, just been for a walk.

Next, they find a dead rabbit in the back of the van.

So you cannot, you cannot say where that rabbit came from?

-Yeah, just the park up there.

-So how did you catch it?

-Dog.

-Right.

-I wasn't going to catch it, but he ran down with it, like.

-Right.

This lad has just admitted to catching a rabbit with his dog.

Unfortunately for him, that's been against the law since 1828.

So that's committing an offence.

Yeah? Committing poaching offences, allowing your dogs to chase a rabbit.

-In a public park? Is that classed as poaching?

-Yeah.

You're not allowed... Your dog... It's an offence to hunt with dogs.

You haven't got permission from the landowner,

whether that's a public park and it's Durham County Council

or it's private, so you are committing offences there.

Even you're not caught red-handed, if there's evidence that you've been

on public or private land with dogs and guns or lamps,

you can be nicked.

What I'll do is, I'm going to seize that lamp

with that battery.

I could seize your dogs, I could seize your van, but I'm not,

but I'm going to summon you all to court,

so you'll get summons for poaching offences.

It's not actually an offence under the Hunting Act...

-But I haven't been caught in the field.

-Doesn't matter.

I don't need... Doesn't matter.

You've got your dogs, you've got your lumps and you've got a rabbit.

Can I ask a question?

-Is there anyway to get the lamps and packs back?

-Once it's been to court.

'Whenever you stop anybody, you're always seeing that person

'as someone you don't know and you don't know what they're capable of,

'and if it comes to the stage where you have got to lay hands on

'and you've got to arrest that person,

'generally for me, I like to think that I can use my voice,'

talk to the people, keep the situation calm

and deal with them in a safe manner.

I'm going to take the battery, right?

This cost me a fortune, I worked hard for this...

I'm going to take your battery, I'm seizing your battery, right?

Honest to God, I paid loads of money for this, do you know what I mean?

Take your hand...

It's either that or you're going to end up getting locked up.

I'd rather be locked up, I'm telling you now.

Right, well, I'm taking it, right?

-Move your hand.

-Just keep calm, mate.

I spent loads of money, I worked hard for that,

do you know what I mean?

Other people don't work nowadays, do you know what I mean?

'Some incidents, it becomes'

a bit of a scuffle,

and that's a situation we're always trying to avoid

because I am going to get hurt and they're going to get hurt.

If you're going out and committing offences, you know the consequences.

If you get stopped, you're going to end up getting done.

-You can't take that out on us.

-Why not? I'm asking you a question.

So if that was you...

If your hobby is a criminal offence,

how can you get upset by it if you get caught?

But this lad's still not happy. He wants to call his dad.

He's not going to give us it back though,

that's what he's saying, do you know what I mean?

'It got to the point when he phoned his dad to basically say,'

"Dad, the police have taken me lamps,"

and his dad's tried to convince me to give them back.

We could actually seize the van and the dogs,

and they could all get locked up for the night.

As it goes at the minute, we've seized the lamps.

There's two lamps here and two battery packs and that's...

and the three dogs and one dead rabbit.

As well as the dead rabbit,

the time of night they were out allegedly walking the lurchers

and the lamps, the boys' clothes are also a bit of a giveaway.

They're all wearing camouflage clothing.

I mean, from the hats, jackets and trousers and even boots,

they had every aspect of a poacher as you would write it.

Unfortunately for them, they were stopped on the night.

How long's this going to take, like, to process it?

-It's going to be at least a month.

-At least a month?

'The young lad didn't like it one little bit

'that we took his equipment off him.'

That's a perfect example of how actually taking equipment

off people, whether that would be a lamp, a dog, a car,

is more upsetting to them than actually being caught

for the offence that they've been caught committing.

It was a game of two halves, but the coppers took the night.

I might get them a can of Coke when we get back to the nick.

It has to be diet, though, because Russ is on a diet.

It is a bit of a humorous story when you think about it, right?

"I'm going to catch a poacher tonight," and we actually

catch one and it's all boxed off at the end of it, it was a good result.

In Cornwall, a camping gas cylinder flared up causing severe,

painful burns to holidaymaker Alan's body and face.

The Air Ambulance took eight minutes to get him

to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.

He's had 10 milligrams of morphine and one gram of IV paracetamol.

Heart rate, 86.

BP's been fairly consistent - 165 over 96...

We'll do bloods, check the thickness of the burns.

That will be mapped onto a piece of paper and then we'll...

In consultation with Bristol as to whether he needs

to go further intervention in Bristol or whether

he can stay here and come back as an outpatient.

Seven weeks later, Alan's back home in Farnham.

He's recovered enough to reflect on what happened that horrific day.

-I gather a gas cylinder exploded?

-Gas cylinder.

-OK.

I don't think I could feel any pain until I was lying there.

I think the adrenaline kicked in the moment that it flashed.

There are no burns where the clothes were.

My glasses clearly protect my eyes.

Cos I lost all the skin around the forehead,

all the way down the side here, all the way around here.

And I was being repeatedly asked where

I felt in terms of the pain threshold.

That's the thing that stands out in my mind.

Still about seven or eight out of ten or has it changed at all?

-At least seven to eight.

-OK.

And very quickly wheeled on the stretcher

into the A&E department.

They very rapidly concluded that I really needed to go

to the nearest burns unit at Plymouth hospital.

Once I was with the specialist team at Plymouth, their assessment

essentially was that I had 17 serious spot burns

spread across my arms, face and legs

and everywhere else, there was a surface burn.

Alan spent just two days at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth

before being let home and treated as an outpatient by his GP.

Thankfully, he didn't need any skin grafts and he's well on the mend.

Given this is all natural healing recovery, it's pretty impressive.

Alan's had a lot of time to figure out exactly what went wrong...

..and now he feels strong enough to explain.

Apparently that is the first time

that I've actually seen this equipment since the accident.

I'm shaking now, so I am nervous.

The sequence that I went through essentially was to...

..check that the...

cylinder was closed.

Can't move it, so it must be off.

I do have quite severe arthritis in my hands

and find it difficult to grip things.

Alan's an experienced camper.

He thought he'd closed the gas off

but due to his arthritis, he hadn't turned the screw valve fully shut.

It had stuck.

With the fridge pilot light still burning,

he disconnected the gas pipe.

Suddenly there was this massive escape.

Flash - suddenly it all happened.

It's the speed of response, this is really what it's all about.

The role of the Air Ambulance - absolutely vital.

You know, the teams that work there, they're all dedicated - the air crews

themselves, the medics that go with them...

Obviously I can't speak too highly of them.

I do lie awake...

..occasionally and it comes to mind.

Still annoyed that I can make this mistake.

You feel annoyed with yourself when silly things happen.

That's life, isn't it?

It's been all go for the emergency services of rural Britain.

Windermere's lake wardens had a busy summer

keeping over a million tourists safe.

The three lads caught by Kevin Hall and his team

were given police cautions for the offence of night poaching.

Alan's burns have completely healed,

and next summer, he'll be going on holiday with his friends

and family, tents...

and a new health and safety checklist.

And you thought it was quiet in the countryside!