IT’S a wonderful time of year, but for the county’s emergency services, charities and organisations, Christmas can also be the busiest. This festive season, the Dorset Echo has been out and about with the people who keep the county going all year long. CATHERINE BOLADO spends some time with the Coastguards...

COASTGUARD teams are on call all over the festive season making sure those using the Dorset coastline are safe.

The team of 12 volunteers at Wyke Regis coastguard team will be on call throughout the festive period from their base overlooking Portland Harbour.

The Coastguard Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre on Weymouth harbourside closed its doors for the final time in September, when operations were moved to the new Maritime Operations Centre (MOC) in Fareham.

However, all coastguard rescue teams along the coast have remained in place and work with the new national MOC on emergency shouts.

Wyke Regis station officer Mark Fagg said: “All the coastguard rescue team are still in place, doing exactly what we have always done, which is ensuring the safety of the public while on the coast and cliff paths.”

The team all have normal day jobs and are on call via a pager system 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, to help those in distress at the coast and help assist other emergency services inland as well.

They specialise in cliff and water rescue and search techniques.

All rescue officers are volunteers and they get paid compensation for expenses.

Their area runs from Abbotsbury beach car park to White Nothe and are part of a network of coastguard rescue teams along the Jurassic Coast. The other teams are Lyme Regis, West Bay, Portland Bill, Lulworth, Kimmeridge, St Aldhelm’s Head, Swanage and Poole.

The Wyke Regis team is one of the busiest in the country and has already done 103 jobs this year.

This year the Wyke team were called to investigate a hand grenade on Chesil Beach and have helped the Lulworth team a few times with cliff rescues.

The Wyke team also man the helicopter landing site at Dorset County Hospital, meet boats towed in by the RNLI and do searches for missing people among other things.

And they will be on call during Christmas. Mark said: “On Christmas Day we always have two team members that won’t be drinking.

“Everyone else will be carrying on as normal. If something does happen, we will be ready to respond.”

Sadly, while Christmas can be a time for family and friends, it can also be a very difficult time for a lot of people.

The coastguards said they often got emergency shouts to look for people where there was a ‘concern for welfare’.

Also during the colder weather and icy conditions, the coastguards said they got a lot of jobs involving dog walkers, those walking the coastline and they even help out with a few boat tows and keeping an eye on sailors who get into trouble while out and about.

The coastguards said that some people tended to forget that it got dark early and could get into trouble by not being ready for the dark conditions.

Weymouth sector manager Rob Sansom said: “Any incident can be complicated by cold conditions and there’s an increased risk of hypothermia.”

Being a coastguard rescue officer became a ‘way of life’ the team said and they paid tribute to their families, and said they couldn’t do the job without them.

Anyone that gets into trouble along the coast at this time of year should call 999 and ask for the coastguard.

 

• Ready to go at a moment’s notice The Wyke Regis team has welcomed three new members in the last 18 months.

Paul Holmes is in the navy, Matt Denton is a product manager and Dan Bell has his own building company.

They said they all wanted to help the community in which they lived and give something back.

Paul said he had been involved in helping out during the Olympics and Paralympics as an ambassador.

He said: “The coastguard job came up and I applied and luckily they accepted me. I’m the new guy – I’ve been here three months.

“I’ve got the time and no commitments.”

He said that they never went on the same emergency shout twice – it was always different.

Matt said joining the coastguard was something he had always looked at doing.

He used to be a special in the police service and has been a member of the Wyke team for 10 months.

He said the job he was proudest of was being involved in helping to find the 11-year-old boy who went missing near Ringstead.

He said the whole team had been involved and they had walked miles that day trying to find the little boy.

He said it was just before dark when they heard he had been found and it was great to hear the news.

Matt added: “When the pager goes off in the middle of the night you don’t know what it will be.”

He said it could be tough sometimes on the families as he could be putting his son to bed and he would get an emergency call and have to go.

Dan has been with the team for 18 months.

He said one of the most memorable shouts he had been on was back in March when they had been notified via social media that there was a dog and its owner in distress on Chesil Beach.

They had a coastguard team at Ferry Bridge and Abbotsbury and they walked to meet each other in the middle.

He said: “I didn’t get home until after 5am. No dog was found and no person was found.”

The shout was put down to a false alarm with good intent. He said it had been hard work walking around 14km across the pebbles of Chesil Beach in the middle of the night. Dan said: “We had two teams on the beach and teams on the shore.”

Dan said that a couple of times the teams took five minute breaks and he had fallen asleep and afterwards he had blisters from the tough ground conditions.

 

• Memorable festive season rescues

THE coastguards have had a number of memorable jobs in past festive seasons.

Last Christmas Day the Wyke team helped find a man who had gone missing while on a walk with his family.

Later in the day they were called to try and help locate a fishing vessel, possibly aground at Osmington, but they discovered nothing untoward.

Rob Sansom said his most memorable rescue was just before Christmas in 2010 when they had two feet of snow in Dorchester.

A little girl from Portland needed to be airlifted from Dorset County Hospital to Southampton General Hospital, after she was struck down with a potentially deadly strain of meningitis.

The Portland helicopter spent hours trying to get through the blizzard and over the Ridgeway to get to her. The roads were impassable and there was a jack-knifed lorry on the Ridgeway.

Coastguards and hospital staff had to sweep and scrape the helicopter landing pad clear so that the craft could land. He said: “We were trying to keep the pad clear – it was a white out.”

The staff and coastguards kept batting the snow and the helicopter managed to get through the Arctic blizzard and complete the airlift successfully.

Also in 2010 the Wyke team helped a D-Day veteran get home in time for Christmas.

The team transported ex-naval officer Freddy Fieldsend, 89, to his home in Charminster in their 4x4, after he was ready to be discharged from Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, but had no way of getting home because of icy road conditions. He was able to celebrate Christmas with his family, thanks to the coastguard team. Mark Fagg said his favourite jobs and the ones that were the most rewarding, were the one where they had made a real difference.

Mark said the most rewarding job he had done in his 20 years as a coastguard was when he and his team helped out in the search for a missing 11-year-old boy from Dorchester, who disappeared while on a walk near Ringstead at the end of August this year.

Just as it started to get dark, the lad was found by a member of the public, stuck in a drainage ditch and was hoisted out by coastguards.

Speaking about the search, Mark said: “It was the most rewarding and most relieved I have ever been with an outcome.”