Island Medical Evacuation

Keeping a lifeboat service in operation requires investment and planning as well as the commitment of a local volunteer crew. Tuesday 30th January was a busy day for the RNLI in Baltimore. The local lifeboat “Hilda Jarrett” was heading to Eyemouth, on the East coast of Scotland for a routine five-year survey, when a call came in for a medical evacuation from Cape Clear Island.
The relief lifeboat “Owen & Anne Aisher” which had been brought over by a Baltimore Lifeboat crew, from Newlyn, Cornwall, just the previous weekend, was immediately tasked to respond to the call.

The lifeboat crew left Baltimore at 08:50 with a Doctor on board. The lifeboat proceeded, in fine weather, to the slip on the East End of Cape Clear Island. The Public Health Nurse was waiting there, attending an elderly woman who was unconscious with a suspected stroke. She had been brought to the slip on the Island Taxi, which had been specially adapted to accommodate a stretcher. The woman was taken on board the lifeboat and returned to Baltimore Harbour, where an ambulance was waiting to take her to Bantry Hospital.

The lifeboat was returned to station and made ready for further service at 10:00. The RNLI lifeboat service is prepared to respond to emergency calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This requires significant commitment in small coastal communities where dwindling populations make people a scarce resource.

On Tuesday 30th January five crew were involved in the medical evacuation from Cape Clear on the “Owen & Anne Aisher”, Coxswain Kieran Cotter, Mechanic Micheal Cottrell, Ronnie Carty, Pat Collins, and John Joe O’Driscoll. A slip crew is required to launch and recover the lifeboat from the station house. These tasks were performed by Vincent Roantree and Tom Bushe.

On the very same day five more crew were involved in taking the “Hilda Jarrett”, across the Irish Sea; Coxswain, Aidan Bushe, Mechanic, Cathal Cottrell, Sean McCarthy, Jerry Smith and Simon Duggan. Two more crew, John O’Flynn and Jim Baker, were at the RNLI Lifeboat Training College in Poole at a Sea Survival course that day.

A total of fourteen individuals, with the support of their families and businesses, were actively involved in the RNLI volunteer service, a sign of the commitment and support for the RNLI Lifeboat service in Baltimore.

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