VOLUNTEERS from Ashburton’s Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team put in almost 2,700 hours last year helping people in trouble.
The charity rescue group’s annual report shows that calls outs were down by 30 per cent in 2023.
A spokesman said: ‘We continue to rely on our incredible volunteers to drop everything, at any time of the day or night, in all weathers to search for lost, injured or vulnerable individuals.
‘This would not be possible were it not for the support they receive from incredibly understanding friends, families and employers.’
At the beginning of last year, and after several years of intensive training, two of team members became fully qualified Mountain Rescue Search and Rescue dog handlers.
Their search dogs Binny and Amber now provide the team and the wider mountain rescue community with an additional capability to find missing or injured individuals
Whilst only had seven callouts in the year for those who were lost or injured on Dartmoor, one lasted for 11 hours.
On this occasion the rescue team was called out at just before 8pm on a Saturday evening.
It was a dark, wet and cold autumn evening and the volunteers were asked to help search for a woman who had become lost while hillwalking near Ryders Hill in the south of Dartmoor.
She had been out since lunchtime and just after calling for help at around 7pm, her mobile phone battery failed.
In the end this callout involved more than 60 individuals from six different organizations including our sister teams and the full-time emergency services. She was located just before 7am the following day, and apart from being wet and cold, in remarkable good spirits.
During the summer, they were alerted to a man who had been hillwalking on the south moor and called for assistance after his dog had been bitten by an adder and was seriously unwell.
He was concerned it would take too long to carry his dog back to his car and then on to a vet.
As the rescuers knew his location, one of the team vehicles was dispatched and picked up the individual and his pet.
After spending overnight and most of the next day at the vet, the dog fully recovered from its ordeal.
A spokesman said: ‘We continue to receive a similar proportion of calls from Devon and Cornwall Police to searching for vulnerable or despondent individuals.
‘Our team members have also ended up responding to incidents in more unlikely places.
‘During a trip to a local climbing wall, a group of our volunteers were present when an individual had a serious fall.
‘Within minutes the individual’s injuries had been assessed by our team members and it was suspected that he had sustained a fractured femur.
‘As the climbing wall was close to our Rescue Centre, first aid equipment and pain relief was quickly obtained.
‘He was then packed ready for transportation to a local hospital where his injury was confirmed. He has subsequently made a full recovery.’