About E-P-O-C
E-P-O-C and Emergency Point Of Contact is the project of Calum Campbell. Calum is a former member of the Isle of Skye Mountain Rescue Team and maintains a keen passion for promoting mountain safety. He’s been involved with St John since 1986 in various guises such as mountain rescue, first aid trainer/assessor, fund raiser and AED trainer. Calum is currently a member of St John Scotland (Highland Branch), two of who’s core aims are Mountain Safety and Mountain Rescue.
Make a donation toward the project.
Calum was astonished to discover that no electronic system exists to raise the alarm and notify authorities of hillwalkers and climbers not reaching safety by a set time and possibly being lost or injured on the hills, so he decided to do something about it and is still working towards that goal. He has purchased emergencypointofcontact.org for future use and retains the intellectual property rights for that project.
Calum sought advice from various organisations and individuals, one of which was the current Team Leader of the Isle of Skye Mountain Rescue Team. This led to diversion number 1 from the original plan. Although the team does not want to be drawn into the scope of mountain safety advise (mountain rescue is entirely a large enough workload for them), they did express a need for signage at various Skye tourist destinations where injured tourists had called an ambulance, rather than mountain rescue, leading to delays in rescues. Following design approval by Skye MRT Committee, Calum sourced the signage with the generous support of St John Scotland (Highland Branch) and Acorn Signs.
Additional advice was sought from Sgt Pete Lorrain-Smith, Police Scotland National Search & Rescue Coordinator, this led to diversion number 2. Pete expressed his wish to see the creation of a multi-lingual mountain safety tips website; most hillwalkers & climbers know the basics but a lot of tourists, particularly foreign visitors, do not. Calum was convinced of the need for this and set about bringing it to reality. The content of the tips is from his own experience, and books & websites that he’s read and visited. The questions that will be asked by an emergency services operator were provided by Sgt Lorrain-Smith. Translations were all via google translate but the proof-reading was completed free of charge by the generous donation of time and expertise by friends, acquaintances, work colleagues and various embassy & consul staffs, too numerous to mention individually by name. Some languages are still to be proof-read and Calum would welcome the feedback of anyone with the expertise to do so.
The original concept is hoped to be completed over the winter of 2022/23, and be operational in a basic format for spring 2023. Although conceived for the hill walking & climbing community, it is hoped to be easily adapted for the use of other groups and individuals; ski mountaineers, costal kayakers, dog walkers, joggers, cyclists, etc. Users will need to pay for this service with a percentage of the profits going to St John Scotland (Highland Branch).
Calum has funded all of the above on his own. Although some income will (in the future) be received from advertising, Calum would welcome any donations towards existing website maintenance and future development.
