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he British Red Cross helps people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are. It is the UK’s leading emergency response charity, with some 3,500 staff and 32,500 volunteers, helping more than a million people every year. The British Red Cross has been a user of the Airwave Network since 2010. Our Reach reporter spoke to David Hallows, North Wales Service Manager, to see how the Airwave Service helps the charity respond in emergency situations.

David has worked for the charity for almost 12 years, and was a volunteer prior to joining the staff. Based in Abergele, he is the Airwave custodian for the region and is responsible for allocating the radios prior to incident response, as well as ensuring staff and volunteers are trained on how to use the radios.

“We use the Airwave sets when we are coordinating emergency response,” said David. “As an organisation we are renowned for our planning, and the Airwave Service has

proved its worth in helping us to do our jobs more effectively.” Below, David outlines two events where the communication capability of the Airwave Network during severe weather conditions proved invaluable:

“The deep snow in March crippled the road infrastructure in North Wales, so we offered the services of the British Red Cross to the local health authority to help transport patients to hospital, using our 4x4 vehicles.

“The need was so great that we brought in mutual aid from Warwick and Bristol. Via the Airwave Network we were able to deploy the support vehicles directly where they were required, and direct them down the clearest routes, as they had no local knowledge. “Using the Airwave radios we were able to book people in and out, know where our staff and the patients were at any time, take progress reports and updates, and importantly, know that people were safe. The vehicles were in use for up to 16 hours a day – at one point we had 15 4x4s supporting a single hospital.

“We provided support for fve days, for although the main roads were cleared quickly, those people living in remote communities were stranded without our help.”

“The foods last winter tested our communications. We were operating three rest centres, they were 45 miles apart and 50 miles from the nearest base station – our area covers from Holyhead to Wrexham and Abergele to Dolgellau. “We had one Airwave set in constant communication with the Police so we could direct our rescue vehicles – the power was down so the Airwave Network was the only means of mobile communication. We had another Airwave set linked back to our Abergele centre so we could send out supplies and volunteers where they were needed most. “Later on we worked with local government organising humanitarian aid in a number of communities. We issued Airwave radios to the operations team so they could report back to base in terms of what was needed and where.

“It was a week-long emergency response, and we impressed a number of colleagues with how we were able to communicate with the Airwave radios. We have some more on order!”