DCRO Call Out to Gautries Hole

It was my birthday and I had been to work as usual and both Karen and I had gone to bed. Then at 01:37, the telephone rang and the disembodied voice provided by BT for SMS message delivery via voice calls started. There was a DCRO call out to Gautries Hole. I could here the rain hammering down so guessed it would be weather related.
After taking a couple of minutes to wake up and get out of bed, we started getting suitably dressed to be outside in the cold and rain. Next was getting other kit together quickly such as caving gear, hot drinks and some quick food.
I tapped in a reply to the SARCALL SMS notification system on my mobile phone and pressed “send” so that the reply message would get sent once I was in an area with mobile phone reception and then walked down Main Street to get the Xtrail and then park outside the house and start loading our stuff in.
We drove to the RV point (the usual car parking layby for P8) via Ashford in the Water and the A623 via Sparrowpit arriving to join other vehicles already there after a travel time of 35 minutes at 02:14. After checking in, I sent a text message to my line manager at work to say I would not be in in the morning.
The incident involved a group of 3 cavers who had been on an evening digging session and after the heavy rain, the section of cave between them and the entrance had sumped. Their wives initiated the call out after they hadn't arrived home as expected.
Three cave divers had been called out and had dived through to find the digging team with no problems, just trapped by the sump.
The decision was taken to bring the diggers out through the sump.
Karen was manning (womanning?) the radio in the DCRO vehicle and I set off for the cave with two air bottles in case they were needed by the divers. The path around the depression containing the entrance to the cave was very muddy and required care to prevent falling and adding to the number of casualties. It was also tricky finding the cave location in the dark despite it only being a short distance from the road.
A small number of us were waiting by the entrance and I could here water flowing inside. After what seemed a relatively short period, the first caver arrived after having been brought through the sump.
Myself and two others accompanied him, after he had been given one of the team Mountain Equipment insulated jackets, back to the parking space so that he could check in and get changed out of wet caving gear. The process was repeated for the remaining two cavers.
Soon all the DCRO kit used was also back at the vehicle and after checking all the kit had been retrieved and everyone had been logged as leaving the incident, we set off for home after 04:20.
By the time the car was unloaded and a few things put away, we managed to be back in bed for 05:15.

I stayed at home having taken the day off from work and getting up at 09:30, while Karen had been up at the normal time of 07:30 and managed to spend a normal day at work.