Hi my name's Simon Dowling and I'm a firefighter for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service.

I'm based here in a lovely part of Manchester called Marple near Stockport and as you well know firefighters rescue a lot of people from fires cars crashes and all sorts of other scenarios.

The one I'm going to talk to you about today is an incident that we attended where we actually rescued a schoolgirl out of a very river that you can see behind me here today.

She was 14 years old and it happened in the February half turn last year. Now this particular spot it's pretty nice - really is a nice little beach here - people throw sticks and stones for the dogs.

The scenario when we attended last year was very different though. There'd been a lot of rainfall and we knew that the river was going to be quite high and quite fast. In fact nearly all the things you can see behind me - the trees the island and even the beach we're standing on today that was completely under water.

We got a call of a young girl who'd gone into water to try and get her dog out. Her dog had been swept away and she'd gone in after him.

When we arrived here we stood on the riverbank and we could see this young girl had actually grabbed onto a branch. She'd gone in the water and because the water was flowing so fast it swept her away.

Luckily for her she's got herself relatively safe, and of no surprise as well the dog had already got out of the river and he was fine.

Dogs are pretty good in the water really and they generally put up with the cold temperatures a lot better than we do. Unfortunately for this young girl there was no real way we could get to her.

We had to wait for one of our fire boats to come, so it meant we had three fire engines, two police cars, and also an ambulance all here and it was pretty upsetting for this young girl. It wouldn't have took much to her to be actually washed away further down the river but luckily for her she grabbed hold of the branch and pulled herself up.

Okay, so what advice can I give you then if you do see an animal or a person in the water that needs some help?

The first thing is trying to stay calm - you need to ring the emergency services and tell them exactly where you are.

Now that might be really difficult when you're in a park like this - there's no house number that you can give, so look for landmarks near the bridge near a football pitch give as much information as you can and then wait for the emergency services to arrive, and when they do tell them exactly what's happened.

The other thing to be aware of is can you pass that person something that they could hold on to. Can you pass a branch to them, is there's anything that you could throw to them to keep hold off to keep themselves afloat.

But most importantly please please please don't go in after them.

Like I mentioned before the pets will always generally get out and they're pretty good at surviving in the water, and we don't want another person in there that might be in danger the problem with rivers and any sort of open water is it's very very cold and even the stronger swimmers it doesn't take long for the arms and the legs muscles to stop working.You won't be able to swim in it.

But most of all the important thing to do is have fun in your local parks and near your rivers this summer.