Jim Roberts on Saving Lives at Sea

The helicopter is organised via the Coastguard Headquarter Station. Now in this area, we’ve talked about Solent Coastguard which is where the call will initiate.

The Coastguard Service have Headquarter Stations and in my time they were known as Marine Rescue Sub Centres. All the distress calls, whether they be from telephones or from radios or members of the public reporting them, all those calls go into the Solent Coastguard Station.

They then decide on what resources they need and for every rescue it is different. It is not like the Fire Service when they have a fairly simple job.

They’ve got a fire; they send a Fire Engine or maybe a extending ladder vehicle etc. In the Coastguard Service, you’ve got Lifeboats, you’ve got helicopters, all sorts of things so the decision on what is sent depends on what the incident is and the Officers in Charge will make that decision.

Sometimes though, that decision isn’t always easy to make if you don’t see what’s going on. If you’re on the scene, it’s much easier to decide what you want, so quite often, one of the things that happens is that the Coastguard send out one of their own mobiles, one of their own vehicles to be on scene.

They will alert some of the rescue services, but they also rely on their own vehicle getting on scene, making an assessment of what they can see and then they may update or increase the number of services they’ve got there so, Solent Coastguard will be the people that were able to call out a helicopter.

Any of the Coastguards on the ground, if they could see that that was necessary, were able to request it and normally their request would be accepted.