I’m heading up near Banff next week myself and while I hope to be able to enjoy the scenery, I don’t want to get the view of the mountain as up close and personal as this guy. While climbing a multi-pitch route, a falling rock hit a climber on the head and knocked him unconscious and caused to him to fall approximately 60 feet. His top piece of climbing protection popped out, but his other pieces held.
A couple of things to keep an eye out for:
Check out the victim’s helmet, that thing has a huge crack in it on the victim’s right side.
I would have probably reached out for the short haul line as it is being flown back in (never been on a short haul, so I’m guessing); the rescuer in the video waits for it to come to him.
The release of the rescue package from the anchor station as the helicopter flies away. If there had been any snags at the anchor, it would have caused a world of problems for the pilot and the rescuer. I’m guessing these guys have trained on this before.
If you remember and appreciate our previous post of the world’s worst edge transition, here is a video of the runner up. I try not not be TOO critical of video because I wasn’t there, but there is always room for learning and improvement. Soooo…
Despite:
1. Having a high change of direction anchor at the edge
2. Having an attendant
3. And two tag lines
They still managed to get the basket hung up on the edge!
Possible fixes:
The high COD at the edge with a system behind it should have enabled the crews to do a vector pull between the anchor and the COD to raise the basket temporarily at the edge to clear obstacle.
It looks like the attendant was just going along for the ride rather than being an active attendant trying to help the basket to negotiate obstacles. While the low attendant position (legs below the basket) seems to be the most popular, I think it would be beneficial in this case, at least during the edge transition, for the attendant to ride in the high position. This is where the attendant’s legs are above the basket and below the attachment bridle. This would allow for keeping the basket away from the snags at the edge. Moving to the low attendant position after the first edge would allow the attendant to keep away from obstructions coming up from below.
Pull on the tag lines!
As a guy who loves to train, I’m reasonably sure that regular training on rope rescue techniques, regardless of equipment, could have solved many of these issues. Get out there and play!
Not quite Donny and Marie (thankfully), but a here are a couple of links and videos; one from a rescue in Yosemite (thanks to MtnRsq on firehouse.com for pointing this one out) and the other, a video of some rope training in Madison, WI.
A Little Bit Country:
First, here is a picture from a recent rescue off of El Cap in Yosemite. There are links below the picture with the rest of the shots taken from that rescue. It was 1200′ from the top of the cliff to the victim and another 2000′ down to the ground after that. There is also a link to a helicopter based rescue from September of last year as well.
While both rescues were from similar locations, the more recent rescue was conducted from the top of El Cap, while last years rescue was helicopter based. Of interest to me in the helicopter based rescue was how the rescuers used a throw bag to the victims and pulled themselves into the wall. It’s a neat technique that doesn’t cross the brain of this urban rope guy that much.
Is Madison, WI really rock and roll? Enough to help make a catchy title for this post I say!
The link to the short video shows some recent rope training from the Madison, WI Fire Dept. The Batt. Chief giving the interview does a pretty good job of explaining the progression of technical rescue disciplines and how they all have their roots in rope work. Nothing crazy in the video, just some rappeling on racks and tandem prussik work.
Given that it is just a simple rappel option, what are your thoughts on weather self belaying, a la Rope Access, is a worthwhile idea? I think that it would simplify and speed up the operation, particularly if there are a limited number of people on hand.
While the title of this post might sound like a joke, it is a deadly serious fact that leaving a door open while searching a structure in fire conditions can lead a very bad ending, as we will see.
While at a fire recently in a two story single family dwelling,with fire on the second floor and searching the room across the hallway from the room on fire, I decided to shut the door behind me to search the bedroom. It’s not something I normally do, as we’re fortunate enough to have aggressive companies who get water on the fire quickly and trucks who aren’t afraid to open up; so the need does not usually arise. However, beating the first due engine in and with a report of people trapped, we made our way to the second floor.
After getting into the bedroom, my partner and I shut the door behind us. That’s a pretty nerve wracking thing to do: shut a door in a house you’ve never been in and can’t see a thing in. It’s easy to miss a doorknob on the wide expanse of wall when trying to make your way back out of that door. Anyhow, even though there was zero visibility and we were conducting our search on feel, it was a great comfort to feel the heat subside A LOT. It bought quite a bit of time on my mental search clock that lets me know when it is time to go. Thankfully, the engine was there quickly and we could hear them getting a knock on the fire.
The reason I mention this is that it really sunk in to me how much of the ongoing fire problem was eliminated for me just by shutting the door. So I started looking around at the importance of keeping doors shut while performing a search. Unfortunately I did not have to look far or in the distant past. My looking about took me to my old department, Baltimore County, to a fire that killed FF Mark Falkenhan on Jan 19, 2011 who died from injuries sustained while searching on the top floor of a 3 story garden apartment.
The fire started as a first floor kitchen fire and rapidly spread to the two upper floors, ultimately entering the unit where FF Falkenhan was searching though an open door to the unit.
Two units, two very different results. The difference is that the unit on the left had the door closed during the fire. This was a powerful picture for me.
If you’re short on time, go to the 21:45 mark of the video below. There are also two reports; one from the ATF and one from Baltimore County. Towards the end of the ATF report are the pictures of the conditions of different units from the fire.
The forward in the Balt. County internal report by the Fire Chief states that they essentially could have done nothing different and that everything went pretty much according to plan. This despite the fact that they:
Have only 3 Battalion Chiefs for a 612 square mile area. It took the Batt. Chief 23 minutes to arrive on scene.
Had no good report from the rear about vertical fire extension.
No engine crew covering the search operation.
No back up hose line for initial attack crew.
Companies split laying on a working fire.
NO RIT TEAM!!
It’s easy to be an armchair fireground analyst, but these are systemic things that have not changed since I worked there for a short time in the late 90’s.
Thanks to Collin Moon from Elevated Safety for pointing us the recently released PBS and Frontline half hour documentary taking a look at the dangers of the cell tower climbing world and who is ultimately responsible for the safety if the workers.
There are several layers of sub contractors between a major carrier like AT&T and the guy who is actually climbing the tower to do work. Because of time pressures and the contractor at each level taking their cut of the pie, the result is that climbers feel pressured to climb without taking proper safety precautions, like tying off, while at height.
While the report is insightful and eye opening, it seems like it is looking to place blame on one group or another. It would seem to me that regardless of time pressure, OSHA mandates, etc… that the worker themselves has the ultimate responsibility to save their own life. The race to the bottom of doing the work on these communications towers is both literal and figurative and looks like it will only continue if people are willing to do things like free climb a tower in order to make $12 an hour. Keep in mind that my thoughts on this are formed having never worked in the communication tower industry, however, I’ve been aware of the effects of gravity for some time now.
Somewhat related is the recent release from New Zealand’s Department of Labor and the unfortunately acronymed Industrial Rope Access Association of New Zealand (IRAANZ) of new best practices guidelines in answer to three workers falling from height over the past year. That’s a lot of falling in a small country from an industry that has a great safety record thanks to groups like SPRAT and IRATA. Here is a link to the Best Practices guidelines:
2070 miles separate Wallace Falls in Washington State and Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada. What brings these two closer together is that each of these falls were the scene of a rope rescue within 24 hours of each other.
The rope rescue at Niagara Falls was performed after the victim attempted suicide by jumping off of the 180′ tall falls. The man waded ashore after eddying out and was hauled topside in a Stokes basket attached to the bucket of a Tower Ladder which was used as a high point. The picture below shows the 2:1 system that appears to be operated from within the bucket. No belay line noted, however, there does appear to be a prussik on either side of the pulley that would theoretically catch the load should one of the legs of the 2:1 fail.
More pictures and an accompanying article can be found here:
The second and, in my opinion, more dramatic happened at the lip of the 270′ tall Wallace Falls in Washington state. A 13 year old was swept to the edge of the precipice after losing his footing on a smaller 10′ waterfall that was upstream.
According to the article, he was clinging to the rocks under an overhang on the side of the river opposite the hiking trail, which precluded use of a helicopter hoist operation. Apparently rappelling to the location was a dangerous prospect as well. I’m paraphrasing, but the article references a main line failure caused by rubbing on the rocks, with a subsequent successful belay line arrest. Hairy stuff indeed. Better still is the video shot by one of the Snohomish SAR volunteers. Take a look at that water and then remember that it is only feet away from the edge of a 270′ drop.
There are always things that could have gone better on every rescue. Sometimes, though, something just catches your eye as REALLY not correct and you feel the need to say something about it. So I’m going to play Monday morning quarterback here.The picture below is from an article about a dog that was rescued after it fell 30 into a well. The upshot is that the dog was rescued and nobody got hurt.
Now the bad part(s)…
The first thing that caught my eye were the rescuers pushing against the tripod to keep it from tipping over. While there are a few guys holding it up, this is not what is generally meant by a guying system ;). The reason they are doing this is because the resultant force of the haul line is wanting to tip the tripod toward the haulers. This is bad because, one, if those guys stop pushing against the tripod, it will tip over and two, it will land on their helmetless heads. As a person who has had the leg of a high directional (HD) land on MY helmetless head, I can attest to the instant headache it causes. I was lucky not to split my head open.
They could have solved their toppling problem a couple of ways:
Use an HD that has adjustable legs, like an Arizona Vortex, to account for that resultant force.
Tie the top of the tripod off in opposition to the main line.
Run the main line through one side of a double sheave pulley, down to the load, back up to through the other sheave, and tie the line off at an anchor opposite the anchor on the haul side. This would have kept all forces on the tripod relatively equal and not have required any guys , rope human, or otherwise.
One last huge issue I saw in this picture was the lack of a belay line. I’m not opposed to a single rope technique, there are plenty of places that use it without issue and are trained to a level that allows them to operate safely with it. In light of other rigging issues in this picture, I’m not sure SRT is right in this situation. I realize a picture is only providing a narrow field of view of what happens in a fraction of a second, but it still allows us the opportunity to learn from it.
This video was put up on youtube by friend of R2T Eric Campbell, who runs http://www.techrescueblog.com/. The video shows an edge transition of a basket and an attendant that is being attempted without the use of a High Directional (HD), such as an Arizona Vortex (AZV).
While there are a few techniques out there that make transitioning an edge like this possible without an HD, it really is in the best interest of clean, safe rigging to keep your ropes off of an edge. While the edge attendants made a valiant effort and did in fact get the rope in the edge rollers, the edge rollers had moved over the edge and were non functional.
I’ve had many an argument where I work about whether or not we needed to purchase something like an Arizona Vortex. It took a few years and a couple of incidents’, but the case was finally made and we now have several. The horse is at the water, maybe he’ll drink after seeing this:
As we’ve posted in previous months, the lack of a cliff, canyon, or tall building does not mean your fire department does not need the ability to perform a rope rescue. This article from Syracuse, NY shows us why.
A man was sitting on his front stoop when it gave way, plunging him into a void space beneath it that, according to the article, 3’x4’x8′. it appears that the rescue team packaged the patient and raised him up using a simple 2:1 Mechanical Advantage system rigged off of an aerial ladder as a high point.
Particularly when they are held on a roller coaster at an amusement park. The Rescue Challenge was held again this year at Kings Dominion in Doswell, Va This is a place forever emblazoned in my brain from the summers of my teenage years spent standing in line for hours for every roller coaster in the park.
Teams from Maryland and Virginia came to the park to rescue a mannequin suspended from a precarious position over a body of water. From the video, and from my memory of seeing coverage of a previous drill at this site, it appears that most teams used a boat and some standard rope rescue techniques to get the victim, albeit at a high level.
Ever the guy looking for Plan’s B, C, and D, I wonder if it would have been possible to do a swim combined with some rope access techniques? I guess I won’t know until I sign up a team for next year and give it a shot and give it a shot.
