One person taken to hospital after early hours East Durham beach rescue

Emergency services were called to the beach at Easington Colliery this morning, Monday, June 27.

Hartlepool RNLI volunteers were paged by Humber Coastguard at 1.19am to assist coastguard, police and the fire brigade to recover an injured person.

The inshore lifeboat Solihull launched at 1.37am and was then followed by the all-weather lifeboat Betty Huntbatch at 1.41am.

The inshore lifeboat was on scene at 1.50am and the all-weather lifeboat arrived five minutes later.

The inshore lifeboat crew recovered the injured person, along with a member of the North East Ambulance Service’s Hazardous Area Response Team, from the beach and transferred them to the all-weather lifeboat which returned to the Ferry Road lifeboat station at 2.30am.

Paramedics were waiting to deal with the casualty who was then taken to hospital.

Hartlepool RNLI Lifeboat Operations Manager Chris Hornsey was pleaded with how the operation went: “A quick response from our volunteer crew members who train regularly for incidents such as this and good team work with the coastguard, fire brigade and police brought the incident to a safe ending,” he said.

"We hope the casualty makes a quick recovery.”

Coxswain Robbie Maiden added: “Great teamwork from my volunteer crew working alongside the other agencies quickly brought the incident to a safe conclusion and on behalf of all the crew here we hope the casualty makes a quick recovery.”

Both boats were refuelled and made ready for service at 3am.