Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue Team reflects on busiest year
The charity says it's attended over 120 call-outs this year
Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue Team says this year has been its busiest ever.
It has been reflecting on the last 12 months saying it has been difficult for its members.
The charity says previously its busiest year was in 2015 with just over 85 incidents and this year it is over 120.
Ian Hugill, incident controller, said: "I think the majority of incidents we've been called to are people mainly locals who are out exercising and have slipped, tripped or fallen from a mountain bike or a horse and sustained an injury which means they can't get back to transport or to hospital.
"Luckily we're a well established charity and we do have some healthy reserves but over the last two years we've eaten into those, and we haven't had the ability to fundraise as we would do normally. This year we were fortunate enough to run one of our fundraising challenges but we've also had some very good donations from some of the organisations that have supported us in the past.
"It costs us around £50,000 a year to keep the team active and operational; that ranges from maintaining the base, paying the usual fees on the property, to keep four vehicles on the road and going through a refresh programme every five or 10 years for those vehicles, but also training our team members.
"It's been difficult but thankfully we've managed to remain operational throughout but certainly some of the midweek incidents, we've been grateful of the support from our neighbouring teams. We've also recently taken on a new intake of trainees that we're going to train through 2022 to help bolster the numbers moving forward.