Jamie Owens
10-01-2010, 05:17 PM
We received a call at approx 2:00am from Kent County Council last night asking us for urgent assistance!
The details were that an 89 year old lady was trapped in her house and the electricity had failed which meant she had no heating or hot water, she was also disabled!
Her Grandson along with his Wife, mother and 3 year old child had tried to get to her in their Shogun only to get stuck, they had called the police and all of the usual emergency services and they had all rejected their calls for assistance! So the mother had decided to get out and walk up to where the grandmother was living, which we later found out that for a woman in her late 50’s must have been extremely difficult as when Mark & myself walked up the lane we were having all sorts of problems.
Phil put out an SMS Responder message but received no reply at all so he called me, as there was a child and elderly lady involved Denise and myself left for Charing and contacted the family whilst on route, the family had managed to free their vehicle and said that they would meet us at a petrol station on the A20.
Phil tried various members with winch equipped vehicles with no reply; I asked Phil to call Wrecker who responded straight away!
We arrived at the RVP to meet the family followed by Phil and Wrecker.
We travelled up to the lane where the elderly lady lives in convoy, Wrecker travelled up the lane first closely followed by myself, we made good progress and managed to get about 150 feet further up the lane than the grandson had managed and I thought that we were going to be successful as Marks Disco with its 4" lift was making good headway through the snowdrift and climbing up over the top on the drifts and crushing them so that we could follow through that was until Marks Disco came to a halt and got stuck.
We decided to get out and walk ahead to assess the situation and quickly found that the snow drift was up to nearly 6 foot deep in some places and in the shallower places we were sinking up to our chests!
We continued to walk ahead and found that the snowdrift was about 50ft long! At first we considered digging our way through but quickly realised that the drift was just too deep. We considered calling for more members to come out and help to dig, but quickly decided that was not an option.
We decided to try to go to the other end of the lane (which we later found was even worse) and try again, but we had the initial problem of freeing Marks Disco. I reversed out of the lane for about 1/4 mile and turned around and reversed back up the lane so as to make it easier to pull Mark out which I managed to achieve.
At this point we were close to giving up and called KCC to ask for assistance in the form of either KSAR of the highways agency (to send a JCB). KCC called us back about an hour later to say a Highways Agency JCB was on its way but would b at least an hour in travelling time after the driver had arrived at the depot!
As we were reaching the bottom of the lane we noticed a flashing amber beacon approaching which turned out to be a Farmer with his tractor fitted with a snow plough, for some reason when the lady's grandson approached him for help he was very reluctant I later found, but when I approached the farmer and explained who we were and what we were trying to do his attitude changed and offered to try and clear the road for us but said he wasn’t promising anything as he had tried yesterday and gave up!
He started to clear the lane whilst we waited at the bottom when we spotted some more amber beacons coming from the opposite direction which turned out to be a digger which drove straight past us followed by a tractor fitted with a snow plough and snow blower, the driver of the tractor stopped and asked if we needed help, I explained the situation and he said that he would go down and meet the digger at the bottom of the lane and get him to come back and help with clearing the lane, he reckoned that they should be able to clear a path that we would be able to get through. The both came back up to where we were and the digger proceeded up the lane to help the farmer who was already trying to clear us a path.
The driver of the second tractor stopped to reverse up the lane to use the snow blower and realised he had a problem; he had either split a hydraulic hose or broke the front differential. He got out and had a chat and it turned out that he used to be a keen off roader and had visited Woodlands quite a lot hence the offer of help.
The original tractor and the digger managed to clear a path through the snow drift so the tractor driver offered to take me up in the tractor to take a look to ascertain if we felt we could make it. The tractor was sliding all over the place but I felt that we should give it a go.
Clearing the lane had caused us another problem and that was the lane was now sheet ice and had a fairly steep incline with a nasty side slope to one side. We managed to get up the lane which was quite scary in places and get to the elderly lady and her daughter!
We then encountered another problem in that the elderly lady was disabled and walked very slowly with a Zimmer frame which she obviously could not use to walk across the snow, we decided that we needed to carry her to my vehicle and then try to get her in, in reality we needed an ambulance to transport her but there was no way an ambulance would have got up the lane!
It was lucky that we had a nurse with us in my Wife Denise; she showed Mark and myself how to carry the lady and then assisted with getting her into the car. We wrapped the lady in blankets and strapped her in safely and warned them both her and her daughter that the ride down could be very bumpy and a bit frightening!
We then travelled back down the lane which by now was getting extremely icy and slippery. When we got to the bottom of the lane we came across KCC response to our request for help in the form of a 3 ton truck with road salt on board which then got stuck while trying to reverse back out of our way.
Once the lorry was freed we proceeded to the care home were the elderly lady was going to stay for the next few days until her power could be restored and she could be safely returned to her home.
Getting her back out of the back of my Disco was a task in itself but Denise managed to get her into a position where we could swing her legs out and then I lifted her and carried her into the home and her room and rested her down in a chair.
The family were very appreciative of what we had done and were extremely surprised that we were volunteers; the elderly lady thought that we were all wonderful and said that she was going to say a prayer for us all. The grandson was so impressed that he is considering joining us!
Now I must say that this shout was the most rewarding that I have done since joining SEE4x4R and this is the sort of thing that I signed up for, we managed to succeed where all others had failed or not even tried as they knew their chances of success were remote.
I must thank the people who assisted us who were William Alexander (the original farmer) Tom in the digger and the young bloke in the 2nd tractor who stopped to help whose name I didn’t get; your help was really appreciated as without your help we may have failed.
We finally stood down at 8:30am
The details were that an 89 year old lady was trapped in her house and the electricity had failed which meant she had no heating or hot water, she was also disabled!
Her Grandson along with his Wife, mother and 3 year old child had tried to get to her in their Shogun only to get stuck, they had called the police and all of the usual emergency services and they had all rejected their calls for assistance! So the mother had decided to get out and walk up to where the grandmother was living, which we later found out that for a woman in her late 50’s must have been extremely difficult as when Mark & myself walked up the lane we were having all sorts of problems.
Phil put out an SMS Responder message but received no reply at all so he called me, as there was a child and elderly lady involved Denise and myself left for Charing and contacted the family whilst on route, the family had managed to free their vehicle and said that they would meet us at a petrol station on the A20.
Phil tried various members with winch equipped vehicles with no reply; I asked Phil to call Wrecker who responded straight away!
We arrived at the RVP to meet the family followed by Phil and Wrecker.
We travelled up to the lane where the elderly lady lives in convoy, Wrecker travelled up the lane first closely followed by myself, we made good progress and managed to get about 150 feet further up the lane than the grandson had managed and I thought that we were going to be successful as Marks Disco with its 4" lift was making good headway through the snowdrift and climbing up over the top on the drifts and crushing them so that we could follow through that was until Marks Disco came to a halt and got stuck.
We decided to get out and walk ahead to assess the situation and quickly found that the snow drift was up to nearly 6 foot deep in some places and in the shallower places we were sinking up to our chests!
We continued to walk ahead and found that the snowdrift was about 50ft long! At first we considered digging our way through but quickly realised that the drift was just too deep. We considered calling for more members to come out and help to dig, but quickly decided that was not an option.
We decided to try to go to the other end of the lane (which we later found was even worse) and try again, but we had the initial problem of freeing Marks Disco. I reversed out of the lane for about 1/4 mile and turned around and reversed back up the lane so as to make it easier to pull Mark out which I managed to achieve.
At this point we were close to giving up and called KCC to ask for assistance in the form of either KSAR of the highways agency (to send a JCB). KCC called us back about an hour later to say a Highways Agency JCB was on its way but would b at least an hour in travelling time after the driver had arrived at the depot!
As we were reaching the bottom of the lane we noticed a flashing amber beacon approaching which turned out to be a Farmer with his tractor fitted with a snow plough, for some reason when the lady's grandson approached him for help he was very reluctant I later found, but when I approached the farmer and explained who we were and what we were trying to do his attitude changed and offered to try and clear the road for us but said he wasn’t promising anything as he had tried yesterday and gave up!
He started to clear the lane whilst we waited at the bottom when we spotted some more amber beacons coming from the opposite direction which turned out to be a digger which drove straight past us followed by a tractor fitted with a snow plough and snow blower, the driver of the tractor stopped and asked if we needed help, I explained the situation and he said that he would go down and meet the digger at the bottom of the lane and get him to come back and help with clearing the lane, he reckoned that they should be able to clear a path that we would be able to get through. The both came back up to where we were and the digger proceeded up the lane to help the farmer who was already trying to clear us a path.
The driver of the second tractor stopped to reverse up the lane to use the snow blower and realised he had a problem; he had either split a hydraulic hose or broke the front differential. He got out and had a chat and it turned out that he used to be a keen off roader and had visited Woodlands quite a lot hence the offer of help.
The original tractor and the digger managed to clear a path through the snow drift so the tractor driver offered to take me up in the tractor to take a look to ascertain if we felt we could make it. The tractor was sliding all over the place but I felt that we should give it a go.
Clearing the lane had caused us another problem and that was the lane was now sheet ice and had a fairly steep incline with a nasty side slope to one side. We managed to get up the lane which was quite scary in places and get to the elderly lady and her daughter!
We then encountered another problem in that the elderly lady was disabled and walked very slowly with a Zimmer frame which she obviously could not use to walk across the snow, we decided that we needed to carry her to my vehicle and then try to get her in, in reality we needed an ambulance to transport her but there was no way an ambulance would have got up the lane!
It was lucky that we had a nurse with us in my Wife Denise; she showed Mark and myself how to carry the lady and then assisted with getting her into the car. We wrapped the lady in blankets and strapped her in safely and warned them both her and her daughter that the ride down could be very bumpy and a bit frightening!
We then travelled back down the lane which by now was getting extremely icy and slippery. When we got to the bottom of the lane we came across KCC response to our request for help in the form of a 3 ton truck with road salt on board which then got stuck while trying to reverse back out of our way.
Once the lorry was freed we proceeded to the care home were the elderly lady was going to stay for the next few days until her power could be restored and she could be safely returned to her home.
Getting her back out of the back of my Disco was a task in itself but Denise managed to get her into a position where we could swing her legs out and then I lifted her and carried her into the home and her room and rested her down in a chair.
The family were very appreciative of what we had done and were extremely surprised that we were volunteers; the elderly lady thought that we were all wonderful and said that she was going to say a prayer for us all. The grandson was so impressed that he is considering joining us!
Now I must say that this shout was the most rewarding that I have done since joining SEE4x4R and this is the sort of thing that I signed up for, we managed to succeed where all others had failed or not even tried as they knew their chances of success were remote.
I must thank the people who assisted us who were William Alexander (the original farmer) Tom in the digger and the young bloke in the 2nd tractor who stopped to help whose name I didn’t get; your help was really appreciated as without your help we may have failed.
We finally stood down at 8:30am