Alastair Beer – Aircraft crashes and the Royal Air Force Mountain Rescue Team

In this week’s podcast Alastair Beer talks about the role of the RAF Mountain Rescue; how it differs from the civilian Mountain Rescue and what capabilities it has. He highlights the dangers of air crash sites and the hazards that face responders who are tasked to air accidents.

Key points from this podcast:

• If it is a military aircraft always assume it is armed and with a civilian aircraft consider the ballistic recovery systems therefore always assume you are working under a high level of risk at any aircraft crash site.
• Only enter the crash sites if you have to save life or for recognition of life extinct for anything else stay out of the crash site.  If you have to go into the site consider preservation of evidence while working on scene
• A crash site will be a really confusing, hazardous and unpleasant place and if first on scene you could be dealing with multiple casualties which is a very difficult situation to find yourself in. Take a moment, take a deep breath and have a think about the scene and make sure you are safe before approaching. Quickly declare a Major incidence and accurately report a METHANE report about the incident back to ambulance control before you start to treat patients, especially if you are first on scene.

Resources related to this podcast:

Guidance publication for Aircraft Post Crash Management – https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/919973/Guidance_Pub_version_High_amend.pdf

About Alastair

Alastair joined the RAF regiment in Oct 1999. Initially based at RAF Waddington as Ground Based Air Defence. In this role he was deployed to Oman, Kuwait and the Falkland Islands. Following that tour he spent 6 years at RAF Leeming in the Force Protection role in which he completed several tours of Iraq and Afghanistan and Belize. In 2010 he was posted to RAF Kinloss and Lossiemouth as a Force Protection instructor and his final tour with the RAF Regiment was as the machine gun specialist on 51 Squadron at Lossiemouth.

His RAF Mountain Rescue career started in 2003 at RAF Leeming as a part time member of the team and continued following his posting to RAF Kinloss. Throughout this period his MRT and RAF Regiment careers ran in parallel. He was released from the RAF Regiment in 2017 and posted as Permanent Staff to RAF Lossiemouth MRT as the Medical Co-ordinator. In 2018 he became the Deputy Team Leader.

His time in MRT has seen him conduct training across the UK, Norway, Europe and Hong Kong. Operational callouts have been very varied from responding to a helicopter crash in Devon through to recovering the bodies of 2 climbers on Scotland’s most northerly Munro, Ben Hope.