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by willyt 851 days ago
The river police and the transport police have a pretty traumatic job in London. But the RNLI, also mentioned in the article, is the maritime search and rescue service for the UK. It’s completely funded by charitable donations and most of the crew are unpaid volunteers; anyone can volunteer. Edit, submitted before finished: At many other towns and cities around the UK which don’t have specialist police units like this and where there are also suicide hotspots the job of body recovery falls to these volunteers.
2 comments
eszed 851 days ago
RNLI standards for crewing and training are very high, and their equipment is top-notch. They have years'-long waiting lists for applicants. (That's at least true in the regions in the South with which I'm familiar. Not sure about elsewhere in the country.) They're an incredible organization that I think should receive more attention than they do.

Source: sailed a bit along the Solent, and got to know some RNLI crew and hopefuls. Have been aboard RNLI rescue craft, and was fortunate enough to ride along on a demonstration runs.

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flir 851 days ago
> the RNLI, also mentioned in the article, is the maritime search and rescue service for the UK

HM Coastguard.

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willyt 851 days ago
Yes technically true. HMCG are recognised in international law as responsible for maritime search and rescue operations in UK territorial waters. Practically speaking in most cases if you have a problem in UK (and Irish) waters the RNLI is probably going to search for and rescue you, if it’s really bad you’ll get a helicopter dispatched as well from Bristow helicopters who are subcontracted to HMCG but I think there’s only about 6 choppers covering the whole of the UK.
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arethuza 851 days ago
HM Coastguard and the RNLI do different roles though - the former is more about co-ordination amongst different rescue agencies and the RNLI runs lifeboats.
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flir 851 days ago
mm. The loss of the RNLI would leave a major hole. More details for anyone who is interested: https://hmcoastguard.uk/news/whos-who-search-and-rescue-your...

But i still maintain HMCG best fits the description "the maritime search and rescue service for the UK". I mean, if you call RNLI with an emergency they'll tell you to hang up and dial 999.

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arethuza 851 days ago
I suppose being the UK there would never be easy answers to questions like that....
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