Monthly Meeting & AGM - “My mission is to rescue, my dream is one day not to have to”
Tuesday 9 May
Anne kicked off the meeting welcoming Sandra Anderson and Grace Smellie from Gargunnock who came along to count the votes for our AGM. Anne then ran through apologies (sharing the exciting things our members are up to which keep them away from Ruskie for our last meeting of the season!) The minutes of the last AGM had been circulated in advance, and there were no comments or changes.
Helen then summarised the balance sheet and finances – the membership has increased this year, and the income has been increased by raffle income and donations. The Carse of Stirling funds were dispersed and we received money from that, we also received donations from Amazon and the Christmas Craft day and the marshalling with Wild Fox also raised money. For expenses, we have had increased speakers costs as we are back in the hall face to face and welcoming speakers to join us in person. The website costs are donated. The electricity costs have reduced as a result of the government subsidy – but we have bought more coal! The profit for the year is almost £900 which is a great result.
Anne presented the presidents report for 2022-23. Members got together again after the pandemic and over the summer were involved in marshalling at the Kindrochit and GlenCoe events. When the meetings started again we heard about nutrition for Olympic athletes; the Emmet technique which shows how minimal intervention generates great results; House of Colour showed us how to be sensitive to our own needs when choosing clothing; we participated in a Christmas Cracker workshop and our Christmas night was a great success at Briarlands with local children singing and a collection for the Salvation Army (and a visit from Santa!) In January a musical and poetry evening ended with haggis and then in February a visit from the Two Ravens Forge; for March we had a reminder of biodiversity from the Woodland Trust; and then an insight into how to repurpose furniture with the Red Fox Studio. Every meeting ends with a Ruskie supper, including Guinness cake; and we all appreciate the effort that goes into these (and the families who get the extras!) Parking has become more of a challenge and the manoeuvrability of the drivers and car sharing is astounding. The committee deal with things seamlessly in the background, and manage finances and tea & coffee appear by magic!! Here’s looking forward to another year of well lived rural lives 😊
Anne then reiewed the current business - she thanked the Ruskie quiz team – Elma, Isobel and Vivien (and Anne!) who won the Federation quiz; Allison and Janet also got very highly commented in the Morton Pairs at the Federation Spring meeting. Diaries and calendars for2024 are available at £6 – let Liz know if you’d like one. The Warnock Trophy 2023 is a short story entitled a childhood memory, max 500 words. The Stirling Show is coming up and we can get a schedule for the Industry Section from Liz. Aberfoyle Bowling Club has invited Ruskie members to a try bowls day on Sunday 21 May.
Anne then introduced “Zak” our speaker for the evening, along with his “assistant” Brian Devlin from Trossachs Search and Rescue who introduced their work to us.
This the Silver Anniversary year of the Trossachs team which has defied the expectations when they were set up! The team are not for Mountain Rescue but they do assist if needed with 20-30 member volunteers in the local community covering the whole National park at a cost of £40,000 per year with no government funding; the organisation relies on grant applications and donations. The team promote health and do CPR training and manage 100 public access defibrillators and are also the community first responder for Scottish ambulance service dispatched to life threatening calls if needed. They provide many other support services including community events or bad weather support – the more awareness we have in the community the better. The promotion of health has been a significant – from formal courses to contributing to training up to 500k people in Scotland in CPR, or even drop in 5 minute sessions at the Tattoo in Edinburgh. There is also a free app which shows defibrillators in the Trossachs areas which have saved 28 lives when used by members of the public. When members are trained to first responder level then they get Ambulance Service IDs so it’s all very official! The team respond to extreme weather like the beast from the east, taking emergency food parcels to the Carron Valley in 6 feet of snow where houses were cut off for 5 days – the help from Arnold Clark for support vehicles is invaluable; the team also have a boat which was used at the Commonwealth Games and on the Gartmore Road to rescue flooded German tourists!!
The Trossachs team support the Ambulance locally but the search and rescue dogs cover the whole of the UK and are even Bollywood film stars! The Search and Rescue dogs are highly trained for urban search and recuse and are used to search collapsed structures – when the team were set up they identified that there are lots of Mountain Search and Rescue there was a need for lowland search and rescue in urban areas for example for 911 or Turkey – 25 years ago there was no urban search and rescue in the UK so the government identified the need for this service and in 2004 the Urban Search and Rescue Service was established. The first time they were deployed was the Stockline Plastics factory in Maryhill and the dogs located all 9 casualties in the rubble for extraction by the fire services. They have been deployed to a number of small incidents but also major incidents such as the Clutha Pub Helicopter crash. The dogs can search a building in a matter of minutes – two dogs as usually used for a search to make sure that dogs can identify locations. Dogs can be “air dogs” who search more generally or “scent specific” who can find individuals – it takes 2 years to train them, but it can be difficult to find locations to train on. The dogs are well recognised with Dogs winning most extraordinary working dog at Crufts, or recognition such as the Pride of Glasgow award. The teams are on standby 24 hours a day and work with a number of other external agencies eg Ambulance, Fire, Police, Coastguard, NHS Forth Valley, Stirling council or local resilience teams. In 2019 the team did 9,000 hours of volunteering for the local community and there is recognition from senior executives in these partners, but no financial support! Although the team are not mountain rescue they do mountain comedy events for charity! After a number of questions from the members, and suggestions for fund raising (!) Anne thanked Brian for his time and made sure that Zak got first choice of the sandwiches he wanted!
The new committee was announced as follows
President – Anne Artis
Committee – Liz Black, Pamela Deans, Sheena Gibson, Helen Little, Heather Miller, Janice Oman, Seona Michael, Linda Gibson
Competitions
Best Mountain Photograph 1) Noreen Hinton 2) Isobel McGuire 3) Sharon McRobert
Suggestion for the Syllabus 1) Pamela Deans 2) Marjorie Baxter 3) Sheena Gibson
