Helicopter scrambled to Portheras Cove after Penzance shout

Monday afternoon had barely rolled into evening before the pagers went again. For Penzance’s coastguard volunteers, a call to the prom was still fresh in the log when a second one came in, this time from a cove down the coast that would end with a helicopter setting down on the sand.

A search along the prom

The Penzance Coastguard Rescue Team was first tasked at 3.31pm to reports of an object, or possibly a person, in the water off Penzance promenade. The team was on scene quickly, spoke with the person who had first raised the alarm, and searched the length of the prom from Jubilee Pool down to Tolcarne.

Several traders along the seafront told the crew they had also seen two people go into the water and come back out again a short time later. Satisfied no one was in difficulty, the team stood down and headed back to the station.

A second call, this time at Portheras Cove

They were still restowing the vehicle when the next call came in, at 5.08pm. This one was for a person who had suffered a back injury at Portheras Cove, a beach reached on foot near Pendeen.

The team left the station straight away and was on scene within ten minutes. It meant a second callout for the coastguard in the space of two hours, and this one would need more than a search along a footpath.

The team reaches the casualty

📷Credit: Alex and Matt

Members made their way down to the casualty alongside the first responder already on scene and carried out an assessment of the injury. Between the nature of the injury and the location of the cove, cut off from the road, the team requested the coastguard helicopter Rescue 924 and a second crew.

Preparations began for the helicopter’s arrival, and a helicopter landing site was set up at the rendezvous point next to the car park at the top of the cove.

Rescue 924 arrives

📷Credit: Alex and Matt

Rescue 924 dropped off a winchman paramedic, and the decision was made to move the casualty to the landing site and on to a waiting ambulance from the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust.

Lands End Coastguard Search & Rescue Team, called in as the second crew, helped move equipment and transfer the casualty from the helicopter to the ambulance. Once the helicopter and the ambulance had left, the two teams regrouped for a debrief, both reporting good collaborative working, before heading back to their own stations.

Portheras Cove has no road down to it. Whatever comes off that beach, rescue team or casualty, still has to go out over the coast path, the cliff steps, or under a helicopter.

📷Credit: Alex and Matt