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.
Stay Safe
