30 August 2022

Cave rescue on the backburner

In June, we had the AGM of the cave rescue team. Unless we have this meeting online for reasons of culvert, we always tag a training on, and so we did this time. And it should have been the start of a busy summer; we had trainings lined up in July and August as well.

These two trainings did not happen. I can't quite remember why the one in July didn't happen, but the one in August was cancelled due to few people having indicated they would attend. But that is not the worst that happened to the team. 

We have a domain with Google; the run the team emails on the Google mail tool, and we used to have a documentation on Google web space. But there was some change through to, and we needed to migrate to some different space. And then something went wrong. And suddenly, we could not access our NWCRO mailboxes. The outside world can't contact us now! Not by email, at least.

If something is really wrong, the police can still contact us as per usual, as they use phone numbers. Callouts are also done by phone. So any emergency would just be dealt with as ever, but the day-to-day logistics of the team are severely hampered at the moment.

I hope we can come out of these doldrums fairly soon! I don't think the situation is less safe here in North Wales for anyone who might end up needing underground rescue, but ideal this situation is not. Dealing with digital issues is such a big part of modern life; you can't even lug someone with a broken bone out of a muddy mine without a lot of computer faffing happening sooner or later!

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