by Rita Barsby

THE SEPTEMBER meeting of Airedale Writers Circle welcomed a speaker from the Cave Rescue Organisation based at Clapham.

Sean Whittle is an outdoor instructor, teacher, and has been a member of the CRO for 12 years, earning a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal for voluntary service along with some of his colleagues.

Sean’s illustrated talk showed the kind of work involved. It is a demanding job done in squalid places and “rescuers have a bad time”. We are thankful they do it and it was reassuring to hear of the professional way they tackle such difficult tasks.

Despite being called Cave Rescue, some 90 per cent of call-outs are for assistance above ground.

Recorded incidents are categorised in several ways.

Cave: rescues from horizontal passages underground where victims may be injured, trapped by floods, wedged between rocks, or simply lost. Potholes and mine shafts are vertical drops called pitches where people have fallen and sustained injuries.

Mountain: rescues involving walkers, fell runners, cyclists and climbers, lost or injured in extreme places and needing medical assistance.

Animal: livestock that become trapped and injured in falls.

Local incidents: volunteers may be called to assist other emergency services, sometimes to help at crime scenes. A small plane crash needed CRO to assist in the location. Some of the worst incidents involve victims of suicide or murder.

The Cave Rescue Organisation requires volunteers who can overcome squeamishness as some recoveries are not for the fainthearted. Suicides are particularly distressing and Sean was reluctant to enlarge on this aspect, except to say it falls to CRO to clean up sites after incidents rather than the police.

It can be a gruesome job. Volunteers do not qualify for counselling like other emergency services.

‘Alerts’ are incidents reported but resolved before team members actually go out.

Why do people go caving? John said: “They can stand where no-one else has ever been, on history which was there before the last two ice ages – it’s called original exploration.”

Large caving systems are known to begin in Yorkshire, go through Lancashire and finish up in Cumbria.

As a writing group, it was useful to those who enjoy the genre of crime: members gleaned helpful ideas for generating settings and plots in their own work.

We realised the kind of enthusiastic people who volunteer. They are cavers who rescue cavers; mountaineers who rescue walkers and climbers; people courageous and willing to enter freezing water, often in the middle of the night, but whatever the time, mostly in the dark. They wear protective clothing and use tip-top equipment and communication systems.

The CRO annual report RESCUE makes good reading and further information is available on the website cro.org.uk.

The Clapham team has 63 members including nine females. In 2013 incidents attended involved 1,207 hours. On a minimum wage this would cost £7,157, or for people on average earnings £17,000. The CRO has no funding apart from voluntary contributions.

The next meeting of Airedale Writers Circle will be at 7.30pm on October 14 at Sight Airedale, behind Keighley Library. The guest will be the writer, Anna Turner.