The Hebrides MRT Mission Statement is to save lives and assist the community in emergencies, and consists of 25 operational team members, all of whom volunteer.
And while the group’s primary role is as a land-based Search and Rescue Team, their secondary role is very much to support the wider community, which may be during adverse weather or major incidents. Examples of this community support includes knocking on doors in outlying villages to check on the occupants’ welfare and providing warm meals where the householder may need that little bit extra support.
The new base in Stornoway provides the team with a purpose-built space that is designed specifically as a training facility, as well as an equipment and vehicle store. This will help improve the development of team members’ core skills as well as reducing the team’s response time for callouts.
It will also have a positive impact on the service the team can provide to the local community, providing a space near to Stornoway and the hospital, where the team can coordinate and respond to prolonged community emergencies, including storms which may damage the electricity infrastructure and cause the power to go off.
Speaking after the new site’s official opening earlier this month, Pamela Harvey, SSEN Distribution’s Customer Relationship Manager, said:
“We’re proud to be supporting the volunteers at the MRT and are delighted to see how our award is going to make a difference - not just to the group itself, but also how it will improve wider resilience on Stornoway in times of community emergencies.
“Our Resilient Communities Fund is all about helping local charities and not-for-profit groups, and seeing everyone gathered together at the opening of the new premises demonstrated just how big a part of Hebridean life the Mountain Rescue Team has been, and will continue to be for many years to come.”
Robert Sinclair, Treasurer and Team Member at Hebrides Mountain Rescue, said:
“Having a new purpose-built base will make such a difference to the team as we are now able to keep our vehicles and equipment in a warm, dry and comfortable base, as well deliver training and host meetings. It was a long journey from 2017 when we first enquired about buying land and building on it, but it was worth it.
“Thank you so much to SSEN’s Resilient Communities Fund - we literally could not have done it without you.”
The photo at the top of this page shows SSEN Distribution’s Pamela Harvey (centre), Fiona MacLeod, SSEN’s Western Isles Operations Manager on the right, standing next to the MRT Team Leader, Dr Charlie Greenwood – who also had these kind words to say about the RCF in our video above.