Richard Ilderton
Richard belongs to: Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade
Richard is an Advanced Technician with the Ambulance Service. He joined the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade in 1993 and is a Section Leader.
Richard was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 18 January 2006. The interview took place at Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade and lasted 12 minutes and 17 seconds.
First serious call out
"I think my first serious job, we had a guy drive his car over the cliff"
I think my first serious job, we had a guy drive his car over the cliff at Seaton Delaval-that was about a thirty foot cliff and sadly the guy died, and that was my first experience of a dead body and sort of had no, sort of, realisation of how it would affect me, not having come across that before. And we ended up sort of going down- so I stayed at the top for radio comms and Michael, one of the other lads who had joined the same time as me, went down at the aid of the fire brigade, the police and the lifeboat and the decision was taken to take this guy’s body off by lifeboat round to St Mary’s, because it was a bit more dignified, because there was a fair, sort of, certain number of spectators at that point. So we thought rather than bringing him up the rocks and having to take him past all that, give him a bit of dignity and bring him off, sort of, the beach way instead. And I think that, that’s always stuck with me; that was the first bad case I’ve had.
Richard has 8 memories in the memorynet:
Richard's memories with a Lifestyles theme:
The importance of volunteering with the Tynemouth Volunteer Life BrigadeRichard's other memories:
Cliff rescue equipmentThis memory has these themes:
Roles and Routines | The North East | Volunteering
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