SARA Wyre Forest Rescue Station volunteers headed to Bala in North Wales to take part in an all Wales Flood Exercise called Exercise Berwyn. The scenario is becoming increasingly common in recent years, the small town of Bala was cut off by flood water and there were many missing casualties. The SARA crew travelled to the flooded village on the afternoon of the 9th April where they played the part of flood refugees in the local leisure centre who were testing their ability to provide an emergency rest centre. Following dinner the crew took part in a night exercise on Lake Bala. The team worked closely with the RNLI Flood Team and other Mountain Rescue teams to search for 20 missing casualties in the floodwater. The crew finally got their chance to rest in the early hours of the morning but this wasn’t to last long as breakfast was at 6am! Throughout the morning Mountain Rescue teams, Fire services, Ambulance HART teams, RAF Rescue, RSPCA, the AA and many more services from across the UK arrived at the holding area ready to be tasked to many realistic scenarios. The scenarios ranged from a car in a river, a submerged caravan, missing people and even a trapped horse.

SARA crews continued the search from the pervious night before being tasked to four people stranded precariously in a submerged caravan. SARA 8 hurried to the caravan from the opposite end of Lake Bala, once on scene the boat crew recovered two of the casualties onto the boat but with limited space and being too dangerous for the other casualties to move along the roof of the caravan an RAF Rescue Sea King helicopter was called to assist. With the aid of the huge Sea King, the caravan was swiftly abandoned to the floodwater and the SARA crew returned to the holding area before another tasking to assist the RAF Mountain Rescue Team with a bank search for missing people along a swollen river. With all casualties accounted for and volunteer rescue crews tested to their limits over the previous 36 hours, Bala once again returned to a quiet, peaceful Welsh lakeside town. SARA crews made the journey back to base in Kidderminster and prepared their equipment ready for the next real call out.

SARA is crewed entirely by volunteers who are on call 24 hours a day to assist the emergency services, while usually holding down a full time paid job too. As a Charity we are totally reliant on public donations, if you feel that you are able to make a donation you can text SARA73 £2, £5 or £10 to 70070.

The crew at Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA), Tewkesbury station were this week pleased to receive the extremely generous sum of £2000 from members of Tewkesbury Round Table. The Tablers raised in excess of £3500 during their annual Santa Sleigh event in the town, with the Boy’s Brigade also benefitting from a sizable donation. The amount raised reflects the generosity of local people, despite the cold conditions on the run up to Christmas. The money donated to Sara will go towards funding new rescue equipment to be used in and around the local area.

Station Treasurer Paul Fearnley is pictured receiving the cheque from Tablers Steve Fabian, Mark Gilchrist, Chairman Steve Ward, Will Parkinson and Gareth Bowen.

A group of 9 Round Table members visited SARA’s home at Gloucestershire Water Rescue Centre to present the funds, tour the facility and meet the crews. Paul Fearnley said ‘these funds are vital to us to enable us to continue to provide a comprehensive and well-equipped rescue service, on permanent stand-by to assist those most in need in our local communities. All SARA staff are unpaid volunteers which mean this money can be used to purchase tangible items, such as a boat engine, that provides immediate and long-lasting benefit.

Steve Ward, Chairman of Tewkesbury Round Table said ‘Once again the generosity of Tewkesbury residents has astounded everyone at Round Table, we do the Christmas collection because it’s such an amazing feeling seeing the children’s faces when Father Christmas meets them and being able to support our very own local charities is very close to our hearts.

Last year’s collection was even more special because we struggled to have enough volunteers to cover the evenings and got very close to cancelling, thankfully a desperate plea on our Facebook page ‘Tewkesbury Roundtable’ saw some very kind people brave the cold and save the day’

Steve continues, ‘thank you so much to everyone that helped us make a difference, more details about us please visit: roundtable.co.uk or email myself at tewkesburyroundtable@yahoo.com’

SARA and Tewkesbury Round Table are hoping to work closer together over the coming months by helping each other staff local event stalls and organise fundraising events. Both groups feel that local volunteers working together can bring greater benefits to all involved.

With freezing temperatures and snow blanketing the Midlands over the past weeks the roads have been quiet and many people has stayed indoors. However, the members of the Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA) have been clocking up the hours to assist West Midlands Ambulance Service responding to the onslaught of emergency calls during the wintery spell.

On Friday 18th January, the snows fell and the volunteer crews based at Wyre Forest station were called out during the early hours to support the ambulance crews by responding to 999 calls in our three specialist mountain rescue 4×4 Land Rovers. The work continued into the night, as many of the crew struggled home from their day job, they were called out to replace daytime crews for the night-shift, with some crew not seeing their bed for over 27 hours. The crews were paired up with a trained ambulance technician or paramedic, and were called to range of emergencies such as sledging injuries, cardiac arrests and falls within the elderly community.

Between the 18th and 20th January the SARA crews provided around 48 hours of volunteer support to West Midlands Ambulance Service. SARA is completely run by volunteers and is entirely funded by public donations.

If you feel that you are able to make a donation you can text SARA73 £2, £5 or £10 to 70070 or make a donation online by clicking here.

Petty Hegler’s Mummers are a team of travelling musicians and actors who perform a series of Mummers Plays in pubs around the Frampton on Severn area each Christmas. Traditionally, donations for charity are collected from the audience at the end of each performance and SARA is Petty Hegler’s charity of choice. Deryck Pritchard, Fundraising Officer at our Sharpness Station, is seen here receiving a superb cash donation of £150 from some of the group at the Three Horseshoes in Frampton during a recent folk music night.

Some of the group are also in “The 2 Anchors”, who perform shanties and songs of the sea, both accompanied and unaccompanied, with an eclectic mix of ‘cello, mandolin, concertina, guitar, whistle and flute. The 2 Anchors will be supporting SARA Sharpness fundraisers at selected street collections and other events during 2013, so why not pause for a while and enjoy the music when making your donation?

Dare you take the 720m ZipWire challenge?
Challenge friends, colleagues or your boss!
Make it a team building event!

Help us to save lives in our region

Win a trip on a SARA lifeboat!