MORECAMBE BAY, UK - Paul Calland is the Deputy Station Officer for Bay Search and Rescue (BSAR), another group of our amazing people.

BSAR provide support, dedicated equipment, specialist Hagglund BV206 all terrain amphibious vehicles and trained personnel to assist H.M. Coastguard, The Police, Mountain Rescue Teams and other Emergency Services on and around the very unique Morecambe Bay and South Lake District Area in the UK.

We spoke to Paul about how BSAR use Decisions For Heroes (D4H):

Talking about planning, availability, and communication.

"Bay Search and Rescue is a typical independent volunteer team; the crew all have 'day' jobs and time is very valuable. Both the Station Officer, Gary and myself as Deputy Station Officer live some way from our base, so D4H is ideal for ensuring we know what team members are available and that we can contact them quickly. However more important to us is the superb concise way that Training and Events etc can be planned in a team calendar, with weekly briefings by text to the team, and that all these and our Incidents can be efficiently documented from any PC where ever we are."

On RAF collaboration, mapping, and reporting.

"Within the first week of using D4H we had a call from the RAF wanting details and locations of previous incidents for their records. The fact that we could almost instantly send a detailed analysis and breakdown of these, with reports for each and location maps of our local hotspots was fantastic. Before D4H we would have been rooting through filing cabinets and taking photos of a map full of pins on the wall!"

Cumbria floods, paperwork, and information.

"In the recent Floods in Cumbria we were called out three times in two days. The third call was for our Hagglund ATERV (All Terrain Emergency Rescue Vehicle) on its truck to be blue light escorted straight to Cockermouth where the worst floods had taken place. Our role was to follow in after the initial boat crews, once the water levels were too low and the debris and underwater hazards too great for them to operate safely. Our ATERV can travel where boats and landrovers cannot, and allow us to evacuate up to 14-16 people at one time in a warm, dry, non-traumatising way (unlike boats and helicopters). We assisted numerous people and completed task after task from the Bronze Command Centre. All these were logged into D4H as we went along, which generated our incident report, which was printed at the click of a button - brilliant. I can safely say no one joins an SAR team to do paperwork. D4H makes the paperwork we have to do easy and the built in maps, grid refs, casualty reports etc provide all the report information anyone may ever need from us."

For more information, visit Bay Search and Rescue (BSAR).