Volunteers from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) will travel to North Carolina at the end of this month in order to train alongside globally-recognised emergency response teams.
The team will travel to Charlotte from Heathrow on 29 September, with the exercise testing the RNLI’s deployment process and logistics, equipment and working overseas. All of those attending the exercise are doing so in their own time.
RNLI Flood Rescue Team members are all either serving volunteer lifeboat crew members or operational RNLI staff who volunteer to be a part of the team, and include includes Sloane Phillips, who is a volunteer crew member at Hastings Lifeboat Station. Sloane joined the Flood Rescue Team in 2008 and is also the teams’ Paramedic. She volunteers alongside Martin Phillips, who is also a volunteer crew member and full time Fleet Staff Coxswain for the RNLI.
Sloane says: ‘It’s exciting to be able to train alongside other emergency services and share expertise. Training is such an important part of what we do, and we’re lucky that the RNLI invests heavily in this and the right equipment so that we can react to an emergency flooding situation should it occur.’
Importantly, the cost of organising a large-scale exercise is being borne by Charlotte Fire Department and North Carolina Emergency Department, meaning the RNLI need only fund its own travel, fuel and food – the cost of which would be the same to carry out the exercise in Scotland.
Robin Goodlad, Flood Response Manager at the RNLI and volunteer crew member at Aberdovey, says: ‘The opportunity to train alongside these globally-respected organisations who have had experience at numerous major flood events will be of huge benefit to the RNLI. Similarly, we will bring our 190 years of water rescue expertise to share with our US counterparts.
‘Our friends at US Airways have been incredibly generous in providing us with flights at a very low cost, which, as a charity with a responsibility to spend our generous donors’ money wisely, means we’re able to take advantage of this fantastic offer to draw on the experiences of our counterparts in the United States.’
The RNLI’s International Flood Rescue Team (iFRT) were formed in 2000 following the Mozambique floods of the same year where some 10,000 people were aided. The team are available to be tasked to any incident of inland flooding anywhere in the world within 24 hours.
Keep up to date with the trip with photos and videos posted on the RNLI’s Twitter feed, @RNLI, during the exercise.
