THREE Wales Air Ambulance crew members – including a paramedic from Barry – have been honoured at a ceremony at the House of Lords for helping save the life of the victim of a gas explosion.

Air Ambulance paramedics Phil Thomas and Gareth Williams and pilot Grant Elgar attended the Ambulance Services Institute Awards, where they were named Air Ambulance Team of the Year for 2010, after their dramatic role in treating and flying the horrifically injured man to hospital.

The crew were called to a business in Bridgend where a 38-year-old man had suffered terrible injuries, including having a leg blown off, when a gas cylinder exploded.

Despite fading light and difficult weather conditions the crew helped treat the patient before flying him to Morriston Hospital for emergency microsurgery - arriving just 34 minutes after the original 999 call.

Gareth Williams, from Tan y Fron, Barry, said: "It's great to be recognised, but this award is not just for us but for the whole Service - because any one of them would have done what we did.

"The incident itself was life-threatening and the emergency ambulance crew on the ground made a really good clinical decision to call us in because the patient's injuries needed microsurgery, which meant we had to get him to Morriston Hospital in Swansea 20 miles away.

"Grant did brilliantly to fly him there because it was getting dark, there was low cloud and it was raining heavily. To have him there in 34 minutes from the time of the call was very, very good.

Gareth, who has been in the Ambulance Service for 26 years - 24 as a paramedic and eight as an air paramedic - does one week in four as a member of the Air Ambulance crew, and the rest of his time is spent as a land-based paramedic working from Barry Ambulance Station.

"It was a great occasion at the House of Lords," he added.

Wales Air Ambulance chief executive Angela Hughes said: "We are immensely proud of all of our aircrew and the lifesaving, skilled work that they do 365 days of the year.

"It is wonderful for this particular team to receive the recognition they deserve, for making such a difference to someone's life.

"This is what the Wales Air Ambulance charity is all about, and it's thanks to the people of Wales that this extraordinary work can be done by our valuable crew."

BARRY ambulance technician Dafydd Dennis, a colleague of Gareth Williams, also received a prestigious Ambulance Services Institute award at the House of Lords.

As previously reported in the Barry & District News, Dafydd dragged an injured man from a burning car seconds before it was engulfed in a fireball, following a crash on Cardiff Road in Dinas Powys.

Former Royal Marine Dafydd was presented with the Ambulance Technician award by Baroness Brown of Whimple at the ceremony, also attended by Welsh Ambulance Services chairman Stuart Fletcher.