Well it’s short notice, but we have had some significant interest in running another “Modern Technologies in Rope Rescue” class. So we’ve decided to add one more for the year.
We’ll be at the Lancaster County Public Service Training Center in Salunga- Landisville, PA on Dec 8-9 for this two day class covering a wide range of what’s new in the rope world. In particular, we will be working heavily with the CMC Rescue MPD (Multi-Purpose Device) and Two Tension Rope Systems. This system dramatically simplifies the rigging needed to execute the majority rope rescues.
We’re also going to be covering the use of Arizona Vortex artificial high directional. While we will cover several traditional setup configurations, we will also be showing the setup and use of the Appalacian Doortex in a couple of different configurations. Knotcraft, with a focus on the benefits of the bowline and it’s many variations, will also be covered in depth.
The cost of this 16 hour class is $280 per person. If you have any questions or would like more information, please give Kelly a call at 240-462-6610 or send an email to
The raw video is of an actual tower rescue in Washington DC. No, not a telecom climber stranded high up an antenna, but a worker dangling on his safety line after his motorized scaffolding had a catastrophic failure. It was Tower 3 who positioned themselves to be able to use the bucket to go get the worker and unclip him from his system and eliminate the need for any type of rope rescue (damn).
A couple of points to note in the video:
Even though it appeared the Tower was going to be able to get the victim, the guys were still getting dressed out in order to perform a rope based operation should it have been necessary. It was a good job getting plan B in motion in case plan A didn’t work for whatever reason.
The worker hanging in his harness was staying relatively still while hanging. As noted by Dr. Roger Mortimer in his 2011 ITRS presentation, it is the lack of motion while hanging in a harness that seems to cause Suspension Trauma, Harness Hang Syndrome, whatever you want to call it. The point is to get the people to move their legs if they are at all able to. Here is a link to his published work on the topic:
Last, it looked like the bottom end of his safety line was entangled with the scaffolding and pulling tension on the line across his body. I don’t know if that means anything or not, but it should be a consideration during size up. If the Tower was unable to get to the worker, it’s possible they could get to that safety line and free it up if it were causing issues.
…to play that overly tensioned piece of rope that’s supposed to be a highline! Or, at least that was my first thought until I realized that it was an unloaded basket. Pictures from a different website show a basket with an attendant on it clearly creating a more appropriate amount of sag in the track line. I’m curious if they ever did have a victim in the basket as well as an attendant. The goal of the drill, aside from incorporating a bunch of rope skills and logistical planning, is to get a patient who is in distress to an area where they can be helped. If that is the goal, why not train with a victim in the basket?
I’m not picking on these guys in West Point, NY. There are lots of places that don’t put victims in a basket. “Safety” is the reason that I have most often heard. If “safety” of your system depends on the difference of 200lbs, we should probably use another system. “Scared” or “uncomfortable” are a much more realistic answer. I know I don’t like being in the basket on drills. Not only are you out of the rigging picture, you also feel completely helpless just laying there. And you pretty much are. But you can imagine that somebody who has NO idea what is going on (an actual victim) is going to be 10 times as scared as you are.
It’s not a bad idea to place somebody in the victim role so you are at least able to empathize with people somewhat when they are laying helpless in a basket.
Now, we’re only looking at a small scene from a moment in time, but the rigging pictured below raised a couple of flags for me. First is the use of redundant anchor straps. The second is attaching one biner to those anchor straps to hold the whole system. Just food for thought:
From St. Paul Minnesota comes video and pictures of this confined space /trench / rope rescue incident where a worker fell down a hole that he had just bored in the sandy soil for a column for the light rail tracks. Thanks to Collin Moon from Elevated Safety for the heads up on this one.
Clever job by the St Paul guys using a horse collar to hand down to the guy in the pit to raise him up with. All in all a decent looking job done simply; the best way. If I could pick some things to improve, I’d definitely make the bight attached to the rescuers harness smaller, I’d probably control the operation with the rope instead of the bucket (which they may have done but it doesn’t look like it), and I would probably get the two guys out of the bucket during the operation.
Here is a link and two pictures of the incident. The CMC MPD looked to be used in this incident for the mainline.
While Sedona, AZ is the site of countless practice rope rescues thanks to being home to a couple of rope rescue schools, it was recently time to do the real deal.
Thunder Mountain was the location of this rescue after a hiker fell several feet of the trail and down into a ravine and was unable to climb back up due to his injury. Here is a link to the story:
One thing that was interesting to me is the three hour search for the victim. As an urban fireman, it is neat to see a different perspective of FD operations in n area with more wilderness than urban buildup. I’m pretty sure that if we had to search 3 hours for somebody, most guys would think we were on a wild goose chase after about 15 minutes; and in a big city they would probably be right. It is neat to see that smaller departments are equipped to handle emergencies like this that take longer to handle. Good job Sedona FD!
Here is one of the pictures from the article. Interesting to note the cross about 100 feet above the rescuer and victim. I’m curious (morbidly) if this was the site of a previous fatality.
Here are a few different rope articles to whet your kernmantle whistle for the weekend.
First up is an article from the Art of Manliness website sent to us by all around manly man and HazMat guru Jack Spencer. It showcases an exercise done in Navy BUD/S training where candidates tie knots underwater. It’s not a huge mental leap to figure out where this might be a useful process to go through: retrieving objects from under water, stabilization of vehicles in moving water, etc… If nothing else it will help break up the boredom of doing the same drill over and over again. There’s a ton of other cool things on this website that are not rope related, yet somehow are still manly.
Next up is a the way window washers SHOULD be rescued when hanging 35 floors up. The difference in the key words used to describe this incident is a pretty stark contrast to the way the FDNY described it’s window washer rescue: Professional, training, safe vs. dangerous, heroic, 45 minutes with a diamond tipped angle grinder, etc… What I’m getting at is that these types of operations are difficult to PLAN for, they are relatively easy to PREPARE for. The distinction being that you can’t know exactly where an incident like this will occur, but you can know that an incident like this will occur somewhere. Victim pick off should be a pretty straightforward option for a team that says they are capable of performing a rope rescue.
And last up is a rescue of a cliff jumper in Alabama. Not your Red Bull type extreme jumping, just a local swimming hole. It looks like a combined ground and helo based plan. As we’ve stated before, the hallmark of a good team is to have a Plan B,C, and D in place. All of those moving pieces still didn’t prevent locals from going right back to jumping though.
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.
