Search and rescue volunteers in Lincolnshire evacuated vulnerable people and their pets from flooded homes following violent storms with help from Mobile Tornado.
The UK-based global company donated licences for its world-leading critical communications technologies to Search and Rescue Lincolnshire, a charity which operates across England’s second largest county and works with the police and other agencies to locate missing persons.
Mobile Tornado supplies push-to-talk over cellular solutions to organisations that depend on fast, robust and reliable communications between individuals and large groups. These are deployed in more than 30 countries worldwide with mobile operators, government agencies and private enterprises.
Volunteers from Search and Rescue Lincolnshire mobilised during last month’s Storm Babet and worked with emergency services to move disabled residents from damaged housing to places of safety. The charity also helped care for evacuees at emergency rest centres and carried out recces of addresses to make sure they were safe for return.
The severe weather event brought more than a month’s rain to Lincolnshire in 24 hours, cutting off communities and flooding more than 150 homes with up to 40 people needing rescue.
Paul Woodman, chief executive at Search and Rescue Lincolnshire, said: “We are enormously grateful to Mobile Tornado for supporting our charity. We were able to use the company’s critical communications technologies in our response to Storm Babet, which were extremely useful.
“Mobile Tornado has been absolutely invaluable for emergency teams to stay in touch. We are able to see the location of our volunteers, communicate with them in an instant and record everything we do across a wide area.
“Previously, we relied on legacy radio systems which had a limited range and were restricted to line of sight. Mobile Tornado enables us to have county-wide communications without having to purchase very expensive radio equipment. For strategic, intergroup and long-distance communications, it is absolutely great.”
The charity is using Mobile Tornado’s push-to-talk over cellular application to enable individual and group communications and the company’s dispatch console, which serves as a command and control centre for the management of lone workers and remote workforces and includes SOS alerts and location tracking.
Search and Rescue Lincolnshire operates teams of leaders, managers, planners and technicians who are able to respond around the clock, all year round. Every member is trained to exacting national standards. The charity relies on donations and does not receive government funding.
Andrew McNamara, channel sales manager at Mobile Tornado, said: “We were delighted to be able to support the important work of Search and Rescue Lincolnshire. The charity aims to save lives and relieve suffering by providing a highly skilled and dedicated team of volunteers who are trained to search for and recover missing vulnerable persons. It performed a vital role helping to evacuate disabled people and their pets in the aftermath of Storm Babet.”
Notes:
Search and Rescue Lincolnshire (registered charity number 1203816) is dedicated to assisting the emergency services in finding missing persons. For more information, please visit: www.sar.org.uk.
