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Cape Town’s selfless rescue team
The Mountain Club of South Africa Search and Rescue team are a team of volunteers doing what they do to make sure help is near for those in distress. Their volunteers don't do it for the thank you but rather do it out of passion for humanity. Most of their volunteers spend hours of their time a month on various training activities ranging from the theory of rigging, rescue equipment knowledge, rope rescue systems, searching, radio work, wilderness medicine, helicopter rescue procedures and many others. “It is difficult to give exact numbers, but we estimate that for every hour that a volunteer spends on a rescue, he or she probably spends four hours on training. We are therefore very proud of the immense effort that our volunteers put into rescues. Furthermore, we do not compensate them and require them to fund their own personal equipment and travel,” said Wesley New, the convener of the Cape Town team of the club. He added that it takes significant dedication and sacrifice to be part of the team and most of it happens away from the public eye. They draw volunteers from experienced hikers, climbers and medical professionals and have a cross-section of ages, professions represented in the team.
All prospective members need to first show that they can look after themselves in the mountains in adverse conditions and challenging terrain before they are accepted on to the call out team where they will be called upon to take care of others. For most volunteers, it will take a couple of years before they can have a sufficient level of experience to lead a rescue team. “Personally, I am humbled to see how volunteers can drop everything and go out in the cold, wind and rain to assist complete strangers in the dead of night. One of my favourite quotes captures it perfectly: Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year at most but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in,” said New. The kind of incidents they deal with range from searches for overdue or lost people, people that get stuck in dangerous or difficult terrain, injured persons in the mountains to searching for missing and presumed downed aircraft. “Not all our rescues end on a positive note and sadly, we also have the unenviable task of dealing with people that die in the mountains; in such cases we take some comfort in the fact that we help families and loved ones to fines some kind of closure by bringing the mortal remains of their loved ones back,” said New. He advises the public to only attempt activities that are well within their ability, don’t take unnecessary risks, leave word with someone you trust about your intentions and when to expect you back. Source: Weekend Argus |
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