from across the uk, as more and more volunteers agreed to help. in the end, over 300 people took part. once i started becoming more aware of my surroundings again, it became obvious to me that people had come from the forest of dean and then from the mendips, and then i started seeing faces i recognised from yorkshire and itjust became obvious that people were coming from all over the country. so, you recognised some of these people underground? i did, yes, yes, some people. there are a lot of faces that i didn t see but i did also see mates and comrades, shall we say. all the way through the rescue. and could you start to appreciate at that point just the effort that people had made to help? yes. yeah, yeah. i felt a little bit guilty at one stage, i must admit, and a whole lot of gratitude. george effectively rescued himself. so, if in his head he trusts us and he wants it and he knows he can do it, then the rescue teams will come together and make it happen.
amid fears russia is preparing to invade ukraine. we think it s highly likely that he is looking to invade ukraine, that is why we are doing all we can through deterrence and diplomacy to urge him to desist. winds up to 90 miles per hour are forecast to hit northern parts of the uk as storm corrie moves in this evening. both the uk prime minister boris johnson and the chancellor say a widely opposed rise in national insurance will go ahead to fund health and social care. families of those killed fifty years ago on bloody sunday have taken part in a walk of remembrance in londonderry to mark the aniversary caver george linnane was trapped for sa hours deep in a brecon beacons cave system after sustaining serious injuries in a fall. in his first broadcast interview
for 3,500 metres, this is the exit where george finally came to the surface. from here, he was transferred into a rescue vehicle, then into an ambulance, then onto hospital. his journey to a full recovery was going to be a long one. so, we ve got ropes set up 30 metres. george still faces months of treatment but as a way of thanking the volunteers who came to save him, he has already pledged to join the rescue team. he understands a bit about rescue from the receiving end. i think that would be a real asset to us, in that respect. but i think it shows his determination, really, | that it is not enough we ve rescued him and he can i go back to his caving, he wants to get involved and give something back and actually be one of those that rescues others. - i think that s fantastic. things come full circle. many of us in the rescue team, we re in the rescue team because partly we know that if something happens to us, we are cavers, someone will come and help us. so we put it in and
my personal favourite part of the cave is the mainstream way, which is beautiful black limestone, clean washed, active stream passage so it is the actual underground river. and i love being in that river. looking back at it now, what strikes you about that day as you were about to set off? what strikes me now is. it is strange that as i approached that hatch on the day and set off on what was a perfectly normal routine caving trip not knowing what was about to ensue. it was meant to be a five or six hour easy trip out in time for dinner and fireworks, and little did i know it was going to turn into a 50, 60 hour epic whatever it was where, you know, i could have never come out of there again. george was caving with two friends, they had reached a section known as the upper smithy when, without warning, the rock beneath his feet crumbled.
like an assault course, then? yes. it was almost like 150 individual rescues put together in one individual thing. one thing i heard you tell george was that some people went back to look for his teeth. explain that to us and what hope was there of finding them? yes, so sometimes, if someone loses a tooth, if it is found and it is kept in the right conditions, it can sometimes be reimplanted. so, one of my colleagues had thought to bring a bottle of milk underground to put his teeth in if we were able to find any of the teeth. so, as we started moving him in the stretcher, a couple of people stayed behind to have a look and see if they could find any teeth that we would be able to save for him. but, unfortunately, they didn t manage to locate them so they are still in the cave somewhere. the rescue had started on a saturday afternoon. by sunday, teams were arriving