Down the wire: Meet 2022 Billy Deacon Awardee Abi Wild

Before joining HM Coastguard’s Search and Rescue crew as a Winch Paramedic, Abi was part of a Hazard Area Response Team (HART), one of ten teams across the UK providing specialist medical resilience in dangerous situations. 

“Chemical, biological, explosive… collapsed buildings, urban search and firefighting…I always wanted to be the guy that could do it when no one else could. When a role came up to become Search and Rescue crew, it just seemed a brilliant fit.”

Speaking about the HM Coastguard Rescue Helicopter team, Abi says: “Our team is like a family, you know, we live together for 24 hours at a time and work together. We couldn’t do what we do without our Winch Op being a ninja at their job, and without the incredible skills of our Pilots, we’d not even be airborne. 

“Meanwhile, our engineers can take the whole aircraft apart and put it back together again. It's bonkers! I feel like we have the easiest job as winchmen, but it’s probably also the most dangerous. It can be scary, and it keeps me awake at night sometimes.”

It was a trial by fire that cemented Abi’s role in the team, when a crucial rescue just three months into the job saw her win the Billy Deacon Award for the courageous rescue of a stricken vessel’s crew, stuck on rocks and engulfed in waves near Salcombe Harbour in August 2021. 

“I’d already been to a few rescues on fishing boats in big seas by that point and they’d absolutely knocked me sick! For this incident, the yacht was on rocks, so I remember thinking that at least I wouldn’t be seasick. Little did I know...”

At considerable risk to herself, Abi winched aboard the violently rolling yacht, helping the two crewmen to safety despite looming cliffs and the dangers of her winch wire becoming tangled in rigging.

Abi’s often asked whether she feels a sense of terror or fear about the incidents she attends, and the answer is simple: she does. She says she just doesn’t have time to let it affect her work. 

What’s it really like to be ‘on base’, sometimes being woken by blaring alarms at all hours of the day and night? Rescue helicopter crews are on 45-minute notice to be airborne and it's the earliest hours of the morning that hit hardest. 

“You're in your deepest sleep and then at 3am, the alarms go off and within 20 minutes you could be in the air. It could be raining, storming, dark, and you could be winching down to an oil tanker or a casualty on cliffs. 

“You’ve got to be thinking straight and keeping yourself, your crew and your patient safe at the same time.”

But thankfully, Search and Rescue crews are adept – it's highly skilled work that becomes second nature, almost muscle memory. “Boom, boom, boom, do all that and then actually think about it later on”, as Abi says. 

“At the briefing I’ve found out what the job is and I’m thinking about the patient’s condition, what I'm going to need kit-wise, how I'm going to get there, how I'm going to get the patient off, what I'm going to take with me, what can stay on the aircraft and what I can use later, and finally, what hospital we might use and what critical care they can offer.”

There’s something inherent to the human condition that helps a casualty cling to hope of rescue, and Abi's seen it first-hand. But with the sight of a Rescue Helicopter that endurance quickly begins to fade. 

“I saw it during the Salcombe rescue. Once I’d arrived, I really had to keep up the adrenaline and the sense that danger doesn’t just end when I arrive – I'd just jumped into it. They needed to keep going until we were all safe.”

The risks for crews are considerable, and even with state-of-the-art technology, equipment and training, it’s something that’s always on the Winch Paramedic’s mind as they descend into the unknown. 

“If the wire snaps there’s a secondary aboard, but if the helicopter has to leave without me I could be left at sea for hours. I’m very aware that I could end up being the one being rescued!”

For Abi, Billy’s legacy sits alongside the courageous acts of winchmen past and present: an unseen force or feeling that digs deep. 

“When we begin our training at HQ in Aberdeen, we sit in the Billy Deacon Briefing Room, and we talk about Billy’s loss. It’s so important that we remember him and what he did for others – he's a hero. 

“I do think about the risks and bizarrely I’m quite OK with it: I know that I’m fully living by doing something useful. I’m so lucky to be helping people every day. 

Speaking about the Awards ceremony at the House of Commons in 2022, Abi recalls: “I really felt like a celebrity for a day. I'll never forget it! It was once in a lifetime. The most incredible thing was meeting Billy's son and family.

“There’s something about joining such a special group of award winners. It just feels a bit like ‘coming home’; you can talk about what happened here or there, how a job went, or what you felt at the time. It’s something that you can’t possibly get at home or speaking with your family – they just haven’t experienced it. 

“At the awards, it was said that we’d remember the day forever, not for the job we won it for, but for the jobs that will be done in the future. I’ve held that in my mind and I really get it.”

But it’s the incidents that are so very avoidable that alarm Abi the most, such as when beachgoers unwittingly become casualties as the tide rapidly comes in around them, or when paddleboarders find themselves drifting to sea. 

“Paddleboarding looks dreamy, and it absolutely is! But what happens if your paddleboard deflates. Where’s your lifejacket? Or your mobile phone? It’s basic water safety, but it saves lives," says Abi, who's a watersports enthusiast. 

“I attended a rescue where a sea swimmer had been wearing bright colours with a bright pink float. She raised the alarm, and when we arrived on scene it was really easy to see her, but it could have been very different. Do whatever it takes and do whatever is most effective to be safe at the coast.”

Looking to the future of SAR crews, Abi turns to how more women can come towards the service, and how that change can be fully embraced without compromise. “Women who are right for this job don’t need to be told that, you know. They know they can do it. 

 If you have a dream, you just have to work hard. You have to figure out what you need to do to be a good candidate to achieve the dream and just go for it. And it doesn't matter if you're female or male, that goes across the board. If you're good enough to do the job, it doesn't matter.”