Volunteers from Teignmouth Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) had a busy night on Tuesday (April 29) attending two incidents in Torbay.

The speed of Teignmouth’s inshore B-class Atlantic 85 lifeboat (ILB), Claude and Kath, proved vital in enabling the crew to swiftly respond to both call outs.

Teignmouth RNLI’s first call came at 8.48pm following calls of a person down a cliff in the Babbacombe area. Four volunteers onboard the Claude and Kath joined a multi-agency search and rescue operation.

This involved: two Torbay lifeboats, the all-weather Alex and Christina Dykes and its inshore lifeboat, Leslie and Marie Dawes, HM Coastguard rescue teams from Torbay and Dawlish and a Coastguard rescue helicopter that was sent from St Athens.

The search focused on a challenging stretch of cliff face with limited access from land.

At 9.30pm, while the cliff rescue was still ongoing, Solent Coastguard tasked the volunteers to respond to a second emergency call after a member of the public reported a person in the water in Brixham Harbour.

Due to the urgency of the second incident, Teignmouth’s lifeboat, the fastest of the RNLI’s lifeboat fleet, was redeployed and arrived on scene at 9:35pm.

The Teignmouth crew was soon joined by Torbay’s inshore lifeboat after the Babbacombe cliff casualty was located by the Coastguard teams.

The cliff rescue casualty was safely recovered and transferred to a waiting ambulance crew for medical treatment.

The person spotted in Brixham Harbour was quickly found and brought to safety by the volunteer lifeboat crews with no serious injuries reported.

Teignmouth RNLI’s volunteer crew were stood down shortly after 10pm and arrived back at the station for recovery and refuelling by the waiting shore crew at 10:40pm.

The evening’s rescues were ‘a great example of teamwork and how working alongside multiple agencies and our fellow volunteers from our flank station at Torbay RNLI allows us to get the best outcome for the casualties,’ said Teignmouth RNLI helm James Stoyle.