The Saviours Of The Severn

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of Severn Area Rescue Association in Tewkesbury. Tracy Spiers meets with the extraordinary men and women who give up their time to rescue strangers

A distraught man calls the police, desperate to find his missing daughter. Within an hour, his garden is full of trained rescue volunteers ready to start searching the surrounding countryside. He is overwhelmed by the fact that a group of people, all strangers to him and his family, are willing to come out in the middle of the night to help.

This is a case of ordinary men and women who work in a variety of professions, doing an extraordinary act of kindness time and time again. They are all members of Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA), a registered charity providing a specialist water and land search and rescue service for Gloucestershire, Hereford & Worcestershire, and Gwent.

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of SARA’s Tewkesbury Rescue Station. Born out of the floods of 2007, it was the first voluntary search and rescue team to have a permanent base within a Fire Station – although funded entirely by public donations.

John Dutton, a senior lecturer at the University of Worcester, is SARA’s Exec Land Search Manager and longest serving member of the Tewkesbury Rescue Station. He, along with his team, is on call 24/7, 365. After receiving an initial text message from Gloucestershire Constabulary or Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue, John, or one of the other Incident Controllers, weighs-up the incident and the risk factors, and responds accordingly, gathering the team together with speed and authority. The family and friends of all members know the score. If a person is in danger, they are off. This includes on birthdays and holidays, although to date no callout has occurred on Christmas day!