UP to £15,000 worth of damage has been caused to vital equipment used by the Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team.

Thieves broke into a storage garage used by the team in Nelson, making off with two medical bags and pouring diesel over 20 harnesses and a 200-metre drum of rope.

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The damaged training equipment will have to be thrown away and replaced. Other items were tossed around the garage.

Team members will be forced to use their front line equipment during training sessions which could impact on response times.

A spokesman for the team, which has 37 volunteer members, said that it would take three years to recover the cost of replacement The kit was being stored in the garage in St Paul’s Road while new premises were being sought. The unit was ransacked by raiders who prising open boards to create a hole.

Mark Wakeman, from the mountain rescue team, said: “This will have a major impact on the team which could reduce our response times. We used the kit for our training sessions so we could then clean it and hang the items up to dry.

“We would then use our front line kit if we were called out because that would be dry and ready to go.

“We will now have to use some of our front line kit for training sessions which could slow everything down.

“It’s disappointing that we have lost this amount of kit and it will take some time for us to get back to where we were.

“I don’t think that the people who did this gave any thought to the people that they would be affecting.

“Their actions could impact on people’s lives because we might not be able to respond as quickly as normal.

“I hope that this sort of thing never happens again but it’s true that it is not the first time we have been targeted.”

Anybody with information should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555111.