Forums Forums Local News One Man and his Dog rescued from River Mersey.

MFRS Marine Rescue Team rescued a man & his dog from the cold waters of the River Mersey today (Saturday 23rd April).

The man was walking his dog 'Wes' near to Eastham Ferry Park around 3pm when 'Wes' decided to go for a swim. Unfortunately due to the steep embankment 'Wes' could not climb out of the water and was being swept away by the tide. Seeing that 'Wes' was in trouble, Wes's owner then entered the cold water and held Wes against the steep embankment.

MFRS's Marine Rescue Boat arrived and deployed an inflatable rescue sled which was rapidly paddled into position by a Rescue Crewman. Both Wes & his owner were retrieved onto the rescue sled and with assistance from the other team members recovered them both to the Rescue Boat. The Rescue Boat then transferred both the Owner & 'Wes' to Seacombe Landing Stage where they were then assisted ashore by waiting Fire Crews.

The dog seemed to enjoy the fast boat trip to Seacombe and even had his ears flapping in the wind as if he was travelling by car with the window down.

Training is often undertaken for recovering persons from the water but having a large dog onboard as well made this a bit more interesting. Luckily the call was received in reasonable time which makes all the difference to the level of risk and a successful outcome.

Source

Nice one. Hahaha. Hope wes and his dad are recovered.

Lol what an adventure! At least Wes enjoyed himself

It made me laugh I must admit. I think it was the part where they said

All I had in my head was Eddie Izzard saying about Noah and the Ark

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Great Wench, i haven't seen that before!

MFRS Marine Rescue are a waste of tax payers money!! we have 3 rnli units on the wirral that do a better job an are free

there trying to keep funding cose theres no more fires these days ppffttt

another WASTE of are CASH that we all work very hard for

So if all of the RNLI boats were unavailable due to call-outs or were too far away to get to you before you risked drowning or drowned, would you say to the Marine Rescue Unit "it's ok lads, I'll just wait for the RNLI and take my chances because you're a waste of money"?

No, thought not

What a load of misinformed shite.
Who the hell do you think pays for the 'free' RNLI?
Bloody hard fund raising and donations.

What's why we have 3 rnli boats act it's 4 with west kirby one but that's only small, am not saying the rnli is a free service I have gave lots of money to the rnli they do an amazing job!! All am saying is we don't need a fire boat that cost so much money when we where fine without them!! 3million pound what a joke. Give that money to the rnli

Some people on here are thick

Ive never understood the logic behind the RNLI (and before anyone jumps, I support them 100%)

Police: We pay for those from our taxes, if we want our own personal or private "police" we pay for Security or Bodyguards.

Fire: We pay for these from our taxes, and in some areas they are now being intergrated into a "basic" Ambulance/First Responder service.

Ambulance: We pay for these from our taxes, if we want a private one we pay for it ourselves, either directly or through health insurance.

LifeBoats: They rely on charity, donations, bequests and fund raising to keep going.

Much as the AA keep trying to tell us otherwise, it's the LifeBoat crews that are the 4th Emergency Service (try dialling 999 if your car wont start one morning, pretty sure you wont get the AA), yet this country, as an island, with over TWO THOUSAND MILES of inland rivers and canals leaves to chance and the generosity of strangers to keep them safe.

The rnli have been going for bloody years and years!! An know what there doing when it comes to local waters an how to rescuce people for it, so why the fook do we need the fire service to have a go so they can look good in the papers

As far as I am aware, it was funded by the Fire and Rescue Research Fund Trust initially and from their existing budget. They took over the service in 2005 due to the inshore rescue service that had been in charge of it running into financial difficulties.

The slide raft (which the RNLI don't have AFAIAA) is capable of transferring up to 60 people at any single time at high speed, which would allow MFRS to evacuate large numbers of casualties in the event of an aircraft ditch. Seeing as the River Mersey is close to Speke Airport, I'd say this was a good thing!!

Between June 2005 and the end of December 2007 (the only set of stats I can find thus far, but I'm sure they'd let me have recent ones if I asked for them) the marine vessel attended 400 critical call outs, ranging from rescues from the river and mud flats to towing vessels in distress to shore.

Source.

I know a few of the RNLI men and can easily find out if their donations have gone down since the Marine Rescue Unit was put into use if you really like.

It still begs the question, if you were in dire need of rescue and the RNLI were all either on emergency calls or too far away to get to you before you drowned, would you tell MFRS to sod off so you could wait for the RNLI?

As a side note, care to cite your source for the sum of £3m I'm not being difficult, just rather deal in facts as opposed to heresay or made up figures plucked from the ether.

1854 the rnli started an they have 444 lifeboats So am sorry I just can't see in point in this boat that coast 700.000 pound for the fire service to look good on and get into the local news!!

I'm sure Wes and his owner could give you one good reason

Yet only 4 of those boats are local, serving 29 miles of coast at least, plus further out to sea.

Please cite your source for the figure of £3m, or as it appears to be now, £700,000.

I very much doubt all those that have been rescued by MFRS Marine Rescue would say that they only did it "to look good on and get into the local news!!

Yet again, if you were in iminent danger of drowning, and the closest and fastest available boat available was that of MFRS, would you tell them to go away and wait for the RNLI?

It's a simple theoretical question that requires minimum thought.

P.S. - it was actually founded on 4 March 1824 as the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, adopting the name National Lifeboat Institution in 1854, and then receiving Royal Patronage from King George IV of England and Ireland shortly after. But I'm just being pedantic now - I'm a stickler for facts