Fears over safety of rescuers
SCOTLAND'S busiest mountain rescue teams – including Cairngorm – are at the centre of an extraordinary row over their safety, claiming they are being seen as "expendable".
There are also concerned that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), Police Scotland and other agencies have "repeatedly refused to assist teams with the recovery of bodies of people killed in the mountains".
The volunteers are also being left on the hill, often many miles from their bases in terrible weather conditions, after completing exhausting rescues rather than being airlifted off the mountainside.
The row centres on the Coastguard helicopter contract awarded by the Department for Transport in 2013 which the teams say is leading to a worse service than previously.
The RAF and Royal Navy previously carried out search and rescue helicopter operations but this was contracted out and won by the Bristow Group with the privatised service coming into operation two years later.
Umbrella body Independent Scottish Mountain Rescue (iSMR) has said that it has been amazed by the level of support since going public with their concerns at the weekend.
Al Gilmour, chairman of the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team, penned the original statement on behalf of iSMR.
He told the Strathy: "We have been blown away by the level of support we have been shown.
"We also have had a lot of interest through political circles and are looking to follow these up in the coming days.
"We see that cross party support from MPs and MSPs is appearing and we are very grateful for this.
"There has also been a positive step forward in that Police Scotland have responded and are both acknowledging our concerns and also looking to investigate pragmatic solutions, both in the short term and beyond."
The joint statement by Cairngorm, Glencoe, Tayside and Lochaber mountain rescue teams was posted last Friday.
It said the rescue teams "can no longer accept an apparent casual disregard for the safety of the volunteers shown by the agencies coordinating search and rescue helicopter operations".
It reads: "The teams have excellent long-standing relationships with the crews of the helicopters and any criticism following is aimed purely at the co-ordination of the service – which they suspect the crews often find as frustrating as do the teams.
"The teams have made repeated representations to the agencies regarding their concerns since the inception of this latest contract.
"Unfortunately, the response has been a rebuff or on some occasions no response at all."
The teams have said the current stance on retrieving bodies is "wholly unacceptable".
They state: "The agencies have repeatedly refused to assist teams with the recovery of bodies of people killed in the mountains.
"The view of the agencies concerned has apparently been that the deceased are not 'persons in distress' and therefore assistance with recovery is not offered.
"The result of this has included examples such as – one incident where volunteer teams had to undertake an incredibly dangerous lower of the stretcher and team managing the body down a narrow gully, dodging rockfall while the aircraft was instructed to standby.
"The helicopter was only to react in the event one of the rescuers was injured.
"In any of these incidents the priority should surely be to minimise the distress and suffering for the families and give the maximum respect for the deceased."
The iSMR said the volunteers were often no longer being helped in evacuating the mountainside.
There has been an "increasing unwillingness" to deploy the aircraft to assist in this final phase of a rescue.
The statement reads: "The inescapable conclusion to this is that the aircraft and crews are too thinly spread to cover requirements or that the agencies do not view the welfare of the volunteer teams in the same way as they appreciate that of the pilots and crew."
The Bristow Group won the 10-year contract with the £1.6 billion deal ending 70 years of search and rescue by the military. As part of the deal Bristow replaced ageing RAF and Royal Navy Sea King helicopters with modern Sikorsky S-92s and AgustaWestland 189s.
