Thankful family donate vital equipment to Northants Search and Rescue

The team was called in to search for the man in February this year who was injured after suffering a fall and now the family has bought a top of the range hypothermia casualty care bag and four rapid self-heating blankets.

A spokesman for Northants Search and Rescue (NSAR) said it was a very special gift.

“We got a call for assistance from the Police in the early evening on a cold night in February 2016, to search for a missing person in Northampton.

“Mr Bennett had gone missing from his home in the early afternoon that day. The family had alerted Northamptonshire Police at that time and a missing person search was initiated by them. Once we were contacted by Northants Police in the evening we had our teams out on the ground and searching within the hour.

“Thankfully he was located very rapidly. He’d suffered a fall in an out of the way location, but we were able to mobilise our 4x4 Ambulance to him and very rapidly we had all our equipment and medic onsite.

“Mr Bennett had severe hypothermia, and was very unwell. Luckily thanks to the speed of search and rapid treatment by the team we were able to begin to warm him up, stabilise his condition and hand him over to paramedics who took him to hospital.

“Mr Bennett is still in hospital, but is recovering well.

“His family, who have been established in the local area for a long time and operate the local Business Scot Bennett Engineering ltd. were so thankful they wanted to do something to help out our charity.

“They have purchased a top of the range Hypothermia Casualty Care bag, and four rapid self-heating blankets. In context these are expensive specialist pieces of equipment we would have taken many months to save for,” the spokesman added.

Neil Balderson, chairman of NSAR, said: “We are grateful and humbled by this act of kindness from Mr Bennett’s family, this makes such a vast difference to us and helps us do all we can to look after our local community when in need. Thank you very much, and our thoughts for a speedy recovery are with you and all your family.”

If you would like to donate to the team to help us continue our life saving work, visit https://mydonate.bt.com/donation/start.html?charity=80908