Episode 4 Real Rescues

Every time a 999 call is made, our rescue services are ready to react, whatever the emergency.

They need skill and speed because every second counts,

whether they're rushing to a call or speeding someone to safety.

Tonight, we get closer than ever

to the drama of the emergency frontline.

This is Real Rescues.

Tonight, the Great North Air Ambulance is called to a race course

after a jockey suffers a serious fall.

More than her career could be in jeopardy.

It's all right, sweetie.

It's all right. It's all right, sweetie.

An exploding TV puts a young boy's life at risk and destroys his home.

It was scary.

Pitch black and scary.

And police finally catch up with a mobility scooter

after its driver survives a detour down three lanes of a busy carriageway.

You're lucky you're not dead, with the speed of the traffic here.

PHONE RINGS

Ambulance emergency.

At Durham Tees Valley Airport, the Great North Air Ambulance is being scrambled.

The trauma team are on an emergency call to Redcar, 40 miles south.

Pilot, Chris Atrall, gets the aircraft ready for take-off.

He's with aircrew paramedic, Colin Clarke.

The third member of the team is Dr Suzie Pritchard.

They've been called to the race course at Redcar to what sounds like a very serious accident.

The race course is an hour away by road but will only take minutes by aircraft.

The air ambulance touches down and the trauma team, Suzie and Colin, are on the scene.

Where is it hurting, Danielle?

Jockey, Danielle McCreary, is giving the on-site emergency crew a lot of concern.

The 25-year-old jockey was about to start a race when the accident happened.

She fell, then witnesses saw the horse trample on her. Suzie tries to calm Danielle as she assesses her.

It's all right, sweetie. It's all right. It's all right, sweetie.

Open your eyes for me. Good girl. Good girl. You're going to be fine.

OK. You're going to be fine.

Danielle is a promising young jockey about to turn professional.

Race course doctor, Jonathan Balman, was first on the scene.

He tells Suzie that she was unconscious for two minutes.

So how long ago did this happen?

They came down about five past six, so about 20 minutes ago now.

-20 minutes and a steady improvement since then?

-Yeah. Yeah.

Danielle, squeeze my fingers on this side.

Head and brain injuries are the main worry, so Suzie is checking her neurological reflexes.

Danielle is not fully conscious and that's worrying so long after the fall.

She's got a bit of a droop there and I don't know if that's just...

Yeah. That's been persistent since she came to.

The medic on scene was concerned because he hadn't seen Danielle moving her right-hand side.

and so given the history of her bang on the head

and having been knocked out,

that can indicate a more serious head injury

and that's why I think he called us, because he was concerned about that.

Is that sore in there?

'She's certainly concussed, because she's quite agitated'

'and so the only way of knowing for certain is to do a CT scan.'

There's no time to waste. Danielle needs to get to hospital where they can find out where she was kicked

and what sort of damage has been done to her head and possibly her brain.

Just going to get her straight in. Just sedate her, slightly.

Give her an anti-emetic, stop her being sick and get her in as soon as possible.

Once she's had the sedative, Danielle's carried to the air ambulance.

No obvious external injuries but head injury. Decreased GCS.

Danielle, can you squeeze my fingers?

Squeeze my fingers. Yeah. She's obeying commands.

Danielle. Danielle.

Danielle. Danielle.

You'll be fine, Danielle.

-Do you want me to move that?

-Go ahead.

-Yeah.

The air ambulance is on its way to Middlesbrough's James Cook Hospital.

She's brightened up. Quite stable. The drugs have worked. You should have her in four or five minutes.

The hospital's emergency department have been put on alert and they're ready and waiting.

The jockey is taken straight into resus, the area where they treat the most seriously injured patients.

She was thrown from her horse and then she's been kicked. She's pretty much as she was on the scene, though.

-Is she?

-Yeah.

Danielle is still very agitated.

-Danielle, OK, nice and still for us. OK.

-All right, Danielle. That's it.

Before the hospital staff can carry out any treatment,

they need to find out what's going on in her head but it's proving very difficult to keep her still.

As they prepare for the scan, the air ambulance trauma team have to leave for the next call-out.

Main concern is that she's got a brain injury, possibly a small bleed in the head.

So what needs to happen next is she needs a CT scan, but because she's quite agitated,

she's obviously not going to stay still for that,

so the consultants are debating on the best way to keep her still,

either to sedate her or to anaesthetise her completely for the scan.

The scan will reveal what sort of head injury Danielle's suffered.

We'll be following her progress.

ALARM RINGS

It's 6pm and a 999 call comes in for Southampton's Green Watch.

A house is on fire.

One crew is already at the scene but the fire is serious and they need backup.

The first station is already in attendance and they've put back an early informative

that the building is well alight.

Don't disappear. I'll see what they urgently need.

Green Watch arrives to see smoke billowing out of the downstairs windows.

They've been blown out by the intensity of the fire.

We've got a front room fire. Gas is off, electric is off.

Crew manager, Steve Evans, is immediately briefed by the Redbridge commander,

who's in charge on site.

A father and son are out and safe.

Tim, can you start up? What he wants is you go upstairs, start the ventilation on that.

-They're going to set the PPV up and blow that through as well, so if you can set up ready for that.

-Yeah.

-OK.

By opening up the windows of the first floor and setting up a powerful fan at ground level,

the firemen can ventilate the building and clear the smoke quickly.

Once they open the window, thick black smoke pours out.

Downstairs, the flames are now out.

It's become clear that it started in a television left switched on.

With the fire out, the Redbridge crew can have a breather.

It's amazing the damage one television will do, isn't it?

Television fires are not uncommon and this serves as a constant reminder

just how much damage can be caused by items we all have in our homes.

TVs tend to burn with high intensity.

It's not unusual for a lounge, with a medium to average fire loading

to be well alight in sort of three to four minutes.

It had blown the front windows out and once the fire vents,

that allows enough oxygen to allow it to progress even quicker,

but it makes it easier for us to firefight because its fire gases aren't contained within the room,

so it makes it easy for us to make our attack.

The crew has also learned that while the television burned downstairs,

ten-year-old Jake Cooper was playing in his bedroom, oblivious to what was going on in the front room.

We'll be finding out in a few minutes just how close a call it was for the boy.

It was like just scary. I could not see a thing.

It's a mid-week morning and the 999 lines of the police control room are suddenly deluged with calls.

You're through to Hampshire Police. What's the nature of your emergency?

Motorists are reporting seeing a man driving a mobility scooter on one of the country's busiest trunk roads.

The coastal A27 highway, a six-lane dual carriageway with a 70 mph limit.

'I need to report an old gentleman that's driving onto the motorway on an electric scooter.'

The scooter was spotted east of Portsmouth and PC Steve Wootton is on his way to investigate.

He's now going eastbound.

He is, of course, causing traffic chaos

so hopefully try and get him before he gets himself hurt.

Hoping he's just round the corner here.

Steve's now approaching a dangerous junction,

where the road widens to eight lanes as traffic joins from the city.

Is that him? Yeah. I think we've got him now.

There he is.

The scooter's on the hard shoulder, hemmed in by concerned drivers.

This is a very busy road and accidents are frequent.

But, despite the immense danger to himself and other road users,

the scooter's 81-year-old owner seems completely unconcerned.

Hello there. Thanks for stopping.

So it's the second time... You were seen going that way earlier on.

You're lucky you're not dead, with the speed of the traffic here.

I think your daughter's reported you missing.

OK. I'm going to try and get you back home.

The passers-by weren't just helpful,

they were pretty brave to shepherd the scooter off the busy road and on to the hard shoulder.

Steve's keen to get scooter and driver off the busy road so he's called control to get a van.

If they could liaise with us over here and they could, obviously,

take him home and repatriate him to his home address.

While they wait, Steve explains why the scooter's incredible journey could have ended in tragedy.

This isn't the place to be going along on this bit of machinery.

There's lots of lorries and things along here, you never know.

All they've got to do is veer off slightly and you'd be flattened.

Steve's now found out a bit more about why he's on this busy dual carriageway.

He's, basically, come along the M27 here. He was off to Farlington. He's gone to an electronic shop.

He's now on his way back home.

It's probably looking about eight to ten miles, I suppose.

He said his machine, does like 25, 50 miles so it's quite capable.

Did eight mph, maximum though, so obviously eight mph here with lorries and things thundering past

and cars at 70 mph, very dangerous place.

The amazing thing is the scooter's driver hasn't broken any law.

He was allowed to use that section of road, unbelievably.

It was not actually covered by motorway restrictions.

There's a cycle path which runs parallel to it which he could have used

but he had his mind set that he was going to the shop and however he was going to get there,

that was the way he was going to do it.

Are you warm enough there? Are you OK? OK. I could get you something... OK. Fair enough.

We've got a van coming. At least we'll get you home safely. That's the important thing.

And, minutes later, rescue's in sight and the van's arrived.

Steve helps the man on board.

Push. Are you OK? Ready. On three.

There we are. Slide across there.

The next job is dismantling the scooter to get it in the van.

Then they can head off in convoy to safety.

But, when they arrive, the rescue work is not over yet for Steve.

He gives an unscheduled opportunity to play the good Samaritan.

Have you fallen over?

We'll be back to see how it all unfolds.

Back in Southampton city centre, Green Watch are at a house fire

which started in a television and smoke-logged the whole building.

They ventilated the house and the fire's been put out.

If it wasn't for a smoke alarm, this fire might have damaged more than the property.

Dad, Geoff, was in the garden but his young son was upstairs when the television caught alight.

The intensity of the fire was excessive

as it's blown all the plaster off the walls,

taken out the plasterboard off the ceilings and stripped everything inside.

This just shows it's a pretty rapid build-up and probably took between 20 and 30 seconds to engulf the room.

The suffocating black smoke reached every part of the downstairs and it was heading upstairs

and threatening to cut off Jake's oxygen and escape route as his father was outside.

I could hear an alarm going.

I wasn't sure whether it was mine or next door's.

And then I see some smoke coming up through the kitchen vent.

So, I run indoors.

I could hardly see anything cos there was just smoke everywhere, thick black smoke.

My main concern was getting Jake out.

Obviously, the fumes were getting so strong, it got hot so quick.

It's chilling to think what might have been.

The stairs were Jake's only way out.

As he ran down, more black smoke billowed up.

I was in my bedroom and I heard fire alarms going off

and there was black smoke coming through the top corner of my door.

So I quickly ran down the stairs and got out the house while possible.

It was like just scary. I could not see a thing.

It was lucky he got out quick. That was obviously cos the fire alarms were going, you know.

That makes a lot of difference, otherwise, I wouldn't even have known if I didn't have an alarm.

The soot covering the boy's room reveals just how time was running out for him.

The fire, maybe within five-seven minutes, would have started attacking the upstairs

and then would have stopped his escape route from the staircase,

so I'd say, maybe another three or four minutes and it would have been perhaps a different story.

Running out of his room into clouds of choking smoke took bravery and a very cool head.

-You OK?

-Yeah.

Yeah. You didn't breathe much in?

No. I was holding my nose when I went down the stairs because that's the best thing.

OK. That's good.

The work goes on for the fire crews.

They have to dampen down and clear out all the debris.

Turning over all the stuff that's dropped in there, all the fire debris.

They're trying to get it out so we can see the true extent of the fire.

We'll have to go down to the timber floor

to make sure the fire hadn't gone through the boards and underneath.

The last thing we want to do is go away and still leave something burning which may re-ignite.

Steve starts the investigation where it all began,

but nothing remains of the television or for that fact, much else.

The main scene of the fire was in the corner and the stuff that was

burning's now been thrown out so it gives us a clearer area so we can see unaffected areas all round.

So we've got relatively clean timber on the floor

cos that was protected by the carpet and the actual unit of the television it was standing on.

The plaster's come off from the heat so it gives us a clean brick wall.

The only concern is whether it's gone into the window,

so we're going to get some people in there to make sure there's no spread inside.

In minutes, one small fire in a television has destroyed the ground floor of this house.

It's a frightening story with lessons for us all.

Unfortunately, a lot of people leave their tellies on and you go out the room,

you don't think that something like that would suddenly catch alight,

but it was so quick. It was just so quick, really. You couldn't nothing about it.

Geoff and Jake owe their lives to a smoke alarm.

Green Watch is staying at the scene until every last part of the house is checked.

In the meantime, Jake is getting on with the important things.

There's nothing like a good computer game to help settle you in with the neighbours.

This is not your average fire tender.

It's loaded with pods, packed with unusual equipment, used for extreme rescues.

This pod, for example, contains...

well, straps that they call strops...

a sling for lifting very large objects

and this lovely piece of equipment here which has got a point and air holes in it.

They can shove this deep into mud

and then either drive air or water into loosen it up before they try and lift something out.

It can help save the lives of some weighty and difficult individuals.

It's used by the animal rescue specialists at Hampshire Fire and Rescue

and the specialist equipment comes in handy when the casualty in question weighs a tonne.

Deep in the countryside, the animal rescue unit has been called to the aid of a prize bull in a pickle.

Chaplton Wizard, affectionately known as Wizzie,

is up to the shoulder in mud after straying off the path.

The farmer called the vet straightaway

but they soon decided it would take more than two of them to get him out.

That's where Colin Horwood comes in.

His long experience with animals means he knows just what to expect in the unexpected.

He's in fine shape. He's obviously a very healthy bull

but you need to be aware that you're pulling and tugging

and not doing any damage to him.

Normally, when you go to any animal rescue, we like to put some form of head restraint on the animal.

If you control of the head, you control of the animal. In talking to the farmer and the vet,

they both knew the animal, obviously,

and that to put a head collar on there would only have antagonised him.

So it was decided that the best thing would be let him have his head free,

according to the farmer who was a nice docile chap, nice friendly fellow

and that he'd just walk out the side of the river when we got him free.

The team set about releasing the trapped animal.

The key is to approach slowly with their specially-designed strops so he won't feel threatened.

It's no small task.

One. Two. Three.

Easier said than done.

Come on, Wizz.

Despite the efforts of about 30 people on the strops, he wasn't going to move.

I think if we'd had the Royal Championship Tug of War team there,

he was going to stay stuck where he was.

At this point, the vet needs to step in to make sure they're not doing their patient more harm than good.

The biggest risk to Wizzie is from stress so his heart and breathing are carefully monitored.

Just as well, because Wizzie's probably the farm's greatest asset.

It's time to get stuck in again.

This time they've managed to get their strops underneath Wizzie which gives them a much better purchase.

But, clearly, man power alone won't be enough.

What they need is something much more efficient.

We decided that we'd use the turfer winch.

'It's hand-operated so it's a very very controlled,'

'very steady but very strong method of winching bulls, calves,'

whatever you need to move, across the ground.

Fortunately, Wizzie seems to sense the team are trying to help and with the strops underneath,

the joint effort of the bull and the fire crew are beginning to take effect.

No-one could accuse Wizzie of not trying.

Then finally, lift-off.

It's a fantastic feeling when you release something as large as he is

and it walks up the bank almost on his own, it's a great relief.

Wizzie seems unaffected by his ordeal.

He's already tucking in to a nice sweet clump of grass.

But will the experience affect his ability to do what a bull's got to do.

We'll find out later.

Traffic cop, Steve Wootton, is returning an 81-year-old man and his mobility scooter home,

after rescuing him from the side of the A27 trunk road.

It had been an eventful day that day, having a mobility scooter on the A27.

At that point, I didn't really think it could get any stranger.

Hello, there.

All he has to do is hand over his charge to a worried but very relieved wife.

I'll go and get his buggy. Bring his motorized buggy in. OK?

With the driver delivered safely home, Steve can get back to his routine. Or can he?

Unheard at first, there's a faint call for help.

And then, if you look very closely, a hand appears over the garden wall, opposite.

Then another call, loud enough for Steve to hear this time.

-Hello, there.

-Help.

Have you fallen over?

Ever the Sir Galahad, Steve vaults the garden wall.

Hello, there. How long have you been there?

Five minutes. Does it hurt anywhere at all?

-Right. How badly is it? Do we get you an ambulance?

-No. No. No. No.

-Are you sure?

I'll give you a hand up if you want.

OK. OK.

But it's not that easy.

Steve needs to get help.

I'll get my colleague to help give you a lift up, OK?

Can you give us a hand over here? This lady's fallen over.

The woman, Wendy Prior, explains how she fell.

I've got vertigo.

-Oh, right.

-I just went.

No problem. Just give this lady a hand up.

Between the two of them, Steve and Chris make light work of the job.

One. Two. Three.

-OK.

-Yeah.

-Are you OK?

Just hurt my leg on that.

Despite her fall, Wendy's still not keen on calling an ambulance.

Waiting for my friend to come back.

-What number are you at?

-It's here.

-What number's here?

-I don't know what number it is.

-You're at your friend's.

-Yeah.

OK. Bear with me.

'It's fortunate that I'm at occasion we were taking the gentleman back to his house.'

If we hadn't been there, she could have been there for quite some time.

Steve's decided to call for an ambulance anyway.

What I'll do, I'll get an ambulance to come down to check you over, make sure you're OK.

Do you want to go and sit over there? Will that be easier for you?

So there's that bench if you can get to it.

Will that be OK? Don't want you falling over again, that's the thing.

I can't leave you for five minutes!

Wendy's friend, Pearl, can't believe the goings-on when she gets home.

It's lucky we were here, actually.

I was going "Hello, help."

I won't forget this road now. This is engrained in my mind.

While they wait for the ambulance, Wendy explains what happened.

I've got what they call labyrinthitis which is a virus in your inner ear.

I take tablets for it but sometimes you just go.

The ambulance has arrived and Steve can go back on patrol after his second rescue in under an hour.

-I'll leave Wendy in your hands.

-Thank you very much.

-Not a problem. OK. That's all right. No worries.

All in all, it's been an extraordinary day for PC Steve Wootton.

'In our job, basically, you get some very strange days.'

This day was one of the days that I'll probably never forget.

Fortunately, everybody was OK.

Got the gentleman back home. He was safe and well.

Wendy was obviously looked after and I'm glad everybody was OK at the end of the day.

Let's catch up with some of the other people who featured on tonight's programme.

Danielle McCreary, the jockey who fell and was trampled on by her horse at the start of a race,

suffered serious bruising to her brain. The recovery took two months.

Fortunately, she suffered no permanent damage.

She can only partially remember the accident.

I can remember going to the start, probably about halfway

and it was no-one's fault, nobody's fault, not even the horse's fault.

It was first-time blinkers.

It just didn't seem to suit it. Frightened itself, to be honest.

It didn't know what it was doing so I had to pull across to the other side of the track.

After that point, I can't remember anything

apart from waking up in hospital the next day, which is not a bad thing.

Danielle was just a year away from turning professional.

The accident has made her even more committed to her career.

It was difficult. I lost most of the feeling in the right-hand side of my body, so I always thought well,

I won't be able to do this again because I won't be able to gallop,

I won't be able to feel, I won't be able to balance right. You know, it's impossible.

And it's just step by step every week,

something changes, something happens to pick you back up again to want to do it.

I'll be shortly getting the all-clear and hopefully within the next two weeks,

I will be sat back on one of the racehorses that hopefully won't throw me off again.

Last time we saw Wizzie the bull,

he was recovering after spending many hours wallowing up to his neck in mud. But how did it affect him?

He's gone back with his heifers now

and I'm pleased to say that nine of those are actually in calf now

which means they're pregnant.

So they'll be having his youngsters in about six or seven months' time.

So that'll add to all the youngsters he's already fathered on the place.

They must be about between 70 and 80 by now.

So, yeah, he's been a really good bull for us and will now continue to be.

Every time you hear a siren,

it means our emergency services are on their way to help someone in distress.

Join me again next time for more Real Rescues.

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