The old MRC plaque is still in place at OB.
The 1980’s
The OB Rescue Team activity was popular with the instructors, but a shift in the structure of the Outward Bound course away from the original 28 days to much shorter offerings created staffing problems, and much less instructor “free time” than had been experienced towards the end of the longer courses where the students were essentially self-reliant. With the increasingly formalised structure of Mountain Rescue, along with the less experienced students resulting from a shorter course format would also make it hard to justify utilising them as troops for a rescue. Additionally, as more staff moved off-base, or left their job, many still wanted to remain on the Rescue Team. These internal and external forces led to the first real volunteer incarnation of the Team. Although still heavily linked to the OB school and its staff, there was a shift to opting-in for OB staff and the inclusion of volunteers from outside. As such the Team mechanisms had to reflect a wider membership. For instance, with personnel no longer all based at a single location, a call-out process other than being woken by the night manager had to come into play. A phone cascade system was introduced, with the police contacting a call-handler, the call-handler contacting his list of 5 contacts, who then worked down their own list of 5 contacts, and so on until hopefully everyone in reach of their land-line had been contacted. This was a slow process, but a reasonably robust one; so much so that it remained in place until the mid 20-teens.
The OB Rescue Team activity was popular with the instructors, but a shift in the structure of the Outward Bound course away from the original 28 days to much shorter offerings created staffing problems, and much less instructor “free time” than had been experienced towards the end of the longer courses where the students were essentially self-reliant. With the increasingly formalised structure of Mountain Rescue, along with the less experienced students resulting from a shorter course format would also make it hard to justify utilising them as troops for a rescue. Additionally, as more staff moved off-base, or left their job, many still wanted to remain on the Rescue Team. These internal and external forces led to the first real volunteer incarnation of the Team. Although still heavily linked to the OB school and its staff, there was a shift to opting-in for OB staff and the inclusion of volunteers from outside. As such the Team mechanisms had to reflect a wider membership. For instance, with personnel no longer all based at a single location, a call-out process other than being woken by the night manager had to come into play. A phone cascade system was introduced, with the police contacting a call-handler, the call-handler contacting his list of 5 contacts, who then worked down their own list of 5 contacts, and so on until hopefully everyone in reach of their land-line had been contacted. This was a slow process, but a reasonably robust one; so much so that it remained in place until the mid 20-teens.
Somewhere lost in the 1980’s, and perhaps keeping up with the shifting focus of its namesake organisation, the Team tidied-up its name from “Outward Bound Sea School, Aberdovey Mountain Rescue Team” to “Outward Bound Wales Search and Rescue Team.” The Search and Rescue rather than Mountain Rescue was thought to better reflect the mixed nature of the work undertaken by the Team, which in no way was confined to the mountains. The name change probably had little impact beyond its own membership however, as everyone else used and continued using “OB” when referring to the Team.
Elsewhere, in 1981 the Clwyd Rescue Team joined the North Wales MR family, changing its name to North East Wales Search and Rescue in 1994.[i