Molton Monthly October 2022

Three decades of service for Exmoor Search & Rescue team

For 30 years their crews have been called out day and night, often in the harshest weather, to help those in trouble in our remotest rural areas.

Exmoor Search & Rescue Team started as a group of volunteers in 1992 with a caravan as a control vehicle kept on someone’s drive. Now the charity has four specialist vehicles all with different and vital capabilities, based at their rescue centre in South Molton and the fire station in Taunton. Plus they have new technology such a drones, thermal imagery and the latest water rescue kit.

Search manager and longest serving team member of 25 years, Phil Sparks said, “When I first joined, we would get around 10 callouts a year, largely for missing people,

while in the last year we had 54 callouts. We still deal with missing persons most of the time, but in addition we assist injured people, carry out checks in storms, and unfortunately on some occasions recover bodies.”

They have a series of fundraising events planned to mark their 30th anniversary, see the advert on page 15 and online here: gofundme.com/f/30k-for-30-years-service

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