Rescue to find pair in Mournes

Rescue to find pair in Mournes

27 August 2014

SEVERE weather threw a father and son off course on a bank holiday camping trip in the Mournes and prompted a major rescue effort on Monday night.

The man and the 14 year-old boy were found in the early hours of yesterday morning after going missing for 13 hours.

The pair set off from the Trassey area but failed to return as planned on Monday afternoon and the alarm was raised with police at 9pm.

Police initially tried to trace their parked car and when it was found empty the Mourne Mountain Rescue (MMR) team was alerted shortly before 11pm.

The Coastguard also conducted searches in the area. Police, Coastguard, and Royal Navy helicopters were asked for assistance but none could safely navigate the Mournes during the strong winds, heavy rain and almost zero visibility. A Royal Navy helicopter remained on standby in Newcastle.

Twenty members of the MMR were deployed across six search parties. The team also requested support from the Search and Rescue Dogs and a dog and handler travelled from Donegal to join in the search.

Martin McMullan from MMR said Monday’s bad weather had taken the pair, from Co. Antrim, by surprise. He said they were very relieved when found in the Ben Crom area at around 5am but “exhausted and suffering from mild hypothermia”.

“We’d quite a bit of work to do, just to ascertain where they had set out from, where they intended to go, where they intended to camp,” he said.

“We then had to deploy what are very limited resources at night time, in very poor conditions to try and find two people.”

Mr McMullan said they were “fit, able individuals” but the weather had taken its toll.

“They were well off their intended route,” he said. “It is quite a treacherous area. It could have been worse.

“Fortunately, they had good equipment with them and fortunately they had done everything that they should have done.

“When they realised they weren’t going to make it out, rather than take further risk, they put their tent back up again, they got back in and they sat tight and waited for help to arrive.”

Mr. McMullan said walkers could sometimes be taken by surprise by mountain weather conditions, pointing out that even small differences in temperature and conditions could have a major impact.

Lawrence Cumming from the Belfast Coastguard agreed that the conditions on Monday and Tuesday morning were difficult.

“Navigation in the Mournes is particularly difficult if you are not fully equipped with the navigation equipment needed to do that, or the experienced hill walker,” he said.

“Weather conditions yesterday, particularly early morning were atrocious.

“It would have presented quite a few difficulties for people who were not entirely with navigation on mountains. This spell of bad weather has come upon us after a reasonable summer so people may have been caught unawares.”