A total of five not-for-profit organisations benefited from the warehouse spring clean we recently completed with Firecracker Works. Amongst the items we repurposed were whiteboards, lockers, supported flats (with brick patterns for good measure) and a lot of chipboard flooring.
Who would want these items you ask? Well, only the team at Water Search and Rescue.
The Water Search and Rescue is a voluntary search and rescue team who work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and with the extreme weather we are currently experiencing in the UK, they are getting busier and busier.
The charity was started in 2009 following a request through British Canoeing to support a Defra (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) national appeal. Since then the team has grown, both training and equipping them. The Water Search and Rescue Team is one of a very limited number of specialist teams; external to Police, Fire and Ambulance services, that has operational responsibility across the UK.
The main operational activities for the team come when the rain pours and can include extracting casualties from isolated places and rescuing individuals from vehicles when they are being consumed by water. The training for the team members is intensive, running over a course of 10 days to ensure advanced rescue technician techniques are practised in controlled environments before putting their skills to use in dangerous, real-life situations.
With a number of new recruits to train and a summer of torrential downpours in sight, Water Search and Rescue needed to build a new training centre and the materials required were found in the warehouse at Firecracker. The set flats will be used to divide a large space into smaller rooms, with the chipboard used to provide adequate flooring for the area. The lockers will be used for trainee equipment and the whiteboards for the classrooms once the Blenheim Horse Trials has derigged.
"The donated lockers are now in place in our changing area, and we made use of some of the whiteboards at the weekend in the temporary medical centre for Blenheim Palace International Horse Trials for the daily briefings and timetables.
Many thanks for the support and we look forward to having the chance to extend our facilities over the coming months."
The Water Search and Rescue Team
By connecting the items from Firecracker with Water Search and Rescue we have not only saved the charity money, which can be used to buy personal safety kits and equipment for the rescue team, but we have kept materials in use and out of landfill.
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This is part 3 of the Firecracker story. In the final part of the series, we find homes for insulation and painted timber. Look out for it next week!
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