Tag Archives: Rescues

RNLI identifies Oban Lifeboat as the busiest in Scotland

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Oban Lifeboat Dennis HardleyToday is SOS Day, a national fund-raiser for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). To mark the day by underlining the service the lifeboats provide, the RNLI have released statistics on Scottish lifeboats and their crews.

In the past year the highest number rescued is credited to South Queensferry near Edinburgh. This lifeboat saved 75 people and was the busiest inshore crew.

Two of Argyll’s lifeboats were mentioned in the news release.

  • The Oban lifeboat was the busiest Scottish crew, making 55 launches.
  • The Islay lifeboat saved the lives of seven people when it was called to a stricken boat. The RNLI says that the crew were operating in conditions described as like: ‘a deep spin in a washing machine’.

Some curious – even surreal – incidents are noted in the RNLI information.

  • In July 2008, the crew of a yacht with an empty coffin strapped to the deck had to be rescued by Barra lifeboat crew on the Western Isles after losing their way on passage from America to Norway to deliver the coffin to a bar in Oslo.
  • Also in July,anxious members of the public spotted twenty pregnant cows in the Dornoch Firth, in Easter Ross, resulting in a series of 999 calls. Coastguard crews from Portmahomack and Dornoch rushed to the scene, along with the Dornoch Inshore Lifeboat. Local farmers however told the rescue crews that the cows were just cooling off in the sea because of the heatwave then scorching the country.

The photograph above, of the Oban lifeboat, the Mora Edith MacDonald, is by the copyright holder, Dennis Hardley.

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Three climbers killed in avalanche on Glencoe’s Buachaille Etive Mor

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Three climbers have been killed in an avalanche on Buachaille Etive Mor, the mountain guarding the entrance to Glencoe. Two are brothers in theeir sixties and from Northern Ireland -  Eamonn and John Murphy and one is a Scot from Monifeith, Brian Murray.

Helicopters were called to the mountain at 12.00 on Saturday (24th January) when a total of nine people, in different parties, were caught up in the avalanche. One was an RAF aircraft from Lossiemouth and the other from the Royal Navy’s HNS Gannet.

Buchaille Etive MorThe RAF SAR helicopter from Lossiemouth took two people off the mountain and flew them to Belford Hospital in Fort William. One man was pronounced dead on arrival and the second died later. The third body was found later in the snow.

This afternoon (Sunday 25th police confirmed that there were three dead, including the two brothers.

Tom Richardson, a walker who  survived the avalanche and called the rescue teams said: ‘As I got to the top of the pass, the edge of the slope – it wasn’t corniced – broke away and we were taken down in an avalanche, some of us rode out the top of it and others got buried’.

Five others were rescued from the mountain and one person is being treated for a shoulder injury.

John Grieve, Glencoe Mountain Rescue leader, paid tribute to the team the dead men were with. He said: ‘The first two had been dug out by the party themselves. They did very well. They located one of the buried friends and started resuscitation. Then using their ice axes as probes they quickly located the second member of the party and dug him out as well’.

Northern Constabulary is advising climbers that the risk of avalanches will remain high for the next couple of days. Sport Scotland’s website is putting the risk at category four, on a scale of one to five.

The photograph, by Colin Souze and licensed under Creative Commons, shows a view from the summit of the Devil’s Staircase looking south over the east end of Glen Coe,  towards Buachaille Etive Mòr with Creise and Meall a’ Bhuiridh beyond.