Frome Lions hand over £1,500 to Somerset Air Ambulance

Story posted on March 25, 2014

A group of the Frome Lions travelled to Henstridge, the Somerset Air Ambulance base, to meet the crew and their helicopter on Sunday 9th March. 

They had a tour around the helicopter by the crew and had a question and answer session. Lion President, Frank Collins, then handed over a cheque for £1,500, raised last year through the Lions Haybale collection.

The Somerset and Dorset Air Ambulance is a registered charity launched in March 2000 and they have attended thousands of 999 incidents since then. They fly a EC135 Eurocopter helicopter  which is able to reach any part of the two counties in 19 minutes and more importantly they can take a patient to a major trauma centre in the south-west in 20 minutes.

It costs £1.7million to operate, about £2,500 per mission. The pilot and the ground crew are all funded by donations, with the medical staff paid for by the South Western  ambulance service NHS Trust.

The Haybale collection has been going annually for over 40 years.  Local farmers donate bales of hay, straw, silage or cash and cheques and the fodder collected is sold to another farmer at market value. Last year the amount of hay and straw collected was up surprisingly, considering the difficulties farmers faced with the wet weather affecting the harvest.

The Frome Lions Club would like to extend its grateful thanks to its friends in the farming community for helping to raise this large amount of money despite the present economic conditions and extremely wet weather last year.

For more information about the Frome Lions Club, please visit our website at www.fromelions.org.uk/