Last night I had the privilege of listening to Jim Green, Animal Rescue Specialist, talking about the lessons the Fire and Rescue Animal Rescue Teams have taken home from positive events like the London Olympics and negative ones like the horsebox crash on the A303. Not only did his expertise, and that of his team, prevent the loss of life at these events but each episode is scrutinised to see what can be done to make things even better.
At the Olympics the main message seemed to be how do you organise and prepare a civilian team so that it co-ordinated in the same way as the rescue services at the scene of an accident? At any event surrounded by thousands and thousands of on-lookers, how do you make sure that the necessary people are at the right place at the right time and that they can work and make decisions without pressure? How do you make sure that you have all the equipment you might need and that everyone knows how to use it?
The team took away the need for careful planning by event managers - for small events knowing how to get hold of their local Animal Rescue Team in a hurry and having designated people to deal with incidents; at larger events having experts on hand.
The lorry crash on the A303 which involved ten polo ponies must have been an horrific scene for anyone attending. The temptation to those involved in the immediate aftermath was to open the doors to let the horses out. As the vehicle was on its side, some of the horses were badly injured, and if they had been freed straight away would have bolted down the road no doubt causing further carnage. Once again it was up to the FRS Animal Rescue Team to co-ordinate the rescue effort which involved the police, ambulance service and vets. Consideration had to be given as to whether these horses could be treated once they had been removed from the vehicle - unlike hospitals, veterinary hospitals are not set up to be on standy for more than a handful of horses at a time. Seven of the horses survived this accident through the careful and systematic handling and extrication of each of the horses which in the end took less than an hour once the horses had been remotely sedated by the vets and the ramp cut away from the lorry.
Amongst the ten things that the team took away from this incident was the need to have a flotilla of horse boxes available at the scene of a big accident so that horse casualties could be taken away in ones and twos as soon as they had been extricated rather than the first one having to be loaded into a lorry and waiting for all of the others to come out. The team have also invested in gas powered remote syringes so that they don't have to be operated manually. Small but clever things like applying duct tape to each horse's headcollar as it is removed so that they can record what drugs the horse has had before the horse reaches the veterinary hospital.
More importantly than anything else though is the fact that after ten years of extremely hard work animal rescue is now seen as a core part of the work of the Fire and Rescue Service because it saves people's lives.
Forty five Fire and Rescue Services across the country have now sent some of their officers to the little field beside Lyndhurst Fire Station to learn about animal rescue techniques and to develop their own skills. As a result most, but not all, services have a dedicated Animal Rescue Team.Officers come from much further afield too - Europe and Australia for example. In Hampshire we can't help feeling a little smug and very reassured because we have the original and obviously the very best team with specialist equipment on specialist vehicles stationed in the north and the south of the county.
The next step is to promote the work of BARTA an organisation set up by Jim and Josh Slater, from the Royal Veterinary College, to advance the training of animal rescue specialists and in particular to push for the training of vets in trauma care. Vets, unlike fire officers, often work in splendid isolation and it is possible for a vet straight out of college to be suddenly faced with a massive incident like the one on the A303. Training at veterinary college and as part of continuing professinal development should ensure that vets are even better prepared.
To find out more about the work of Animal Rescue Teams across the country go to Friends of the Hampshire Animal Rescue Team on Facebook.
