A woman has been airlifted to hospital after an incident next to the sea that was attended by the coastguard, volunteer rescue groups, ambulance and police.
Emergency services were called to North Tyne Pier at around 1pm on Friday (September 22) following reports of a woman who had got into difficulty on some slippy rocks.
The incident was first reported to HM Coastguard after they received a 999 call from the mum of a 28-year-old woman who had fallen around six feet and suffered several injuries.
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According to the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade, who was one of the first on the scene, the casualty had been attempting to access a rocky area on the seaward side of the Pier; due to erosion, there is now a gap of nine feet between the access stairs and the rocks, which the casualty had started to lower herself onto when she’d fallen.
Once on scene, team members from the Life Brigade requested a set of ladders to allow the team to safely reach the casualty, and then provided casualty care, treating the lady for injuries to her knee and wrist/arm, with Entonox provided to help manage her pain.
Unable to move the woman on their own, the Life Brigade called on the Coastguard Rescue Helicopter to help them move the casualty to hospital.
The incident was also attended by the Senior Coastal Operations Officer from the Coastguard and Blyth Coastguard Rescue Team, alongside North East Ambulance Service's Hazardous Area Response team.
The Coastguard Rescue Helicopter from Humberside Airport arrived at around 3pm and winched the casualty onboard, before flying her a very short distance to a landing site at Tynemouth Priory.
She was then taken to a local hospital for further assessment and treatment.
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Following the incident, a spokesperson for the Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade said: "This was a challenging incident due to the difficulties in accessing and extracting the casualty from the location.
"It is an area the team have trained at for several years and we were able to use our local knowledge to ensure prompt action was taken to get the correct resources on scene to care for the casualty.
"We’d like to thank the many members of the public who observed the helicopter rescue but kept a safe distance away to allow us to operate safely, and the staff from English Heritage at The Priory who helped our colleagues from Blyth prepare and secure the landing site."
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