Seconds count for lifesavers — February 2006

Portishead lifeboat crewman Dave Herbert had just finished his dinner at home one Sunday evening when his PageOne pager went off, summoning him on a rescue mission.

After driving to the boathouse, Dave met up with other crewmembers that swiftly launched the Denbar Sage lifeboat and headed to Clevedon, where two teenage girls were in difficulties in the water. A few minutes later the crew rescued the girls, who had been clinging to a pier support after strong currents swept them away from the beach. Luckily, they escaped with nothing worse than mild hypothermia and were quickly reunited with their relieved parents.

"Without a quick response the outcome could have been very different," said Dave. "The girls were on board the lifeboat 17 minutes after the 999 call was made."

Based in the Severn Estuary and covering an area of 170 square miles, the Portishead Lifeboat Trust has relied on PageOne tone-only pagers for its rescue alerts for more than 10 years. On average, the crew can launch the lifeboat within 12 minutes of receiving a callout from the coastguard in Swansea . Launching the lifeboat quickly and efficiently requires a team of eight people in addition to the three crewmembers.

"Pagers are the obvious way of calling out our team quickly and reliably. With the group call facility all our crew are called simultaneously," said Dave. "We have a cascade phone system in place should the pagers fail, but have never had to resort to this."

"We considered BT, but discounted them because of delays in receiving messages and their pagers rely on mobile phone masts which don't provide the coverage we require. PageOne was the only company which we could find that could provide a quick pager response and coverage with no blank areas. We have a good relationship with Page One, its service has been reliable and changes in tariffs have worked in our favour, allowing us to provide all our personnel with pagers. We now hold 40 pagers. Even on a hot day a person in the water can show signs of hypothermia after 15 minutes, in the winter this is under 10 minutes, so a quick response from the lifeboat is essential."

The Portishead Lifeboat is run by an independent charitable trust, which relies on public donations. For more details, visit: www.portishead-lifeboat.org.uk