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.
Depending on which news report you read, a 22 year old female either “took a tumble” or fell 90 feet and suffered neck and back injuries as well as severe leg injuries after she fell from Balls Falls and had to be airlifted to a hospital. The technical rescue team decided against a rope system and instead carried her up the trail because of “poor lighting and safety issues.” HERE
Here is a brief video of the falls:
If I fell from the top of that, I’d call it more than a tumble! While I was obviously not on the scene, it strikes me as odd that lighting is a reason to call off the possibility of a rope rescue. It speaks of the need to both equip your team to operate at night as well as train at night.While cliche, it is true that rescues don’t always happen when it is 72 and sunny.
And from just upstream of the Balls Falls rescue, was a group of three 20 year old guys climbing on the rocks beneath Horseshoe Falls in Niagara. Police rappelled 50 feet down to the group, busted them for disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment, and possession of a controlled substance. A threefor while on rope! HERE
Busy times on rope for our neighbors to the north!
Lastly, a lucky close call for a couple and there dog in Northwest Spokane, WA after they’re Toyota pick flew 50 feet down an embankment and their trailer catapulted a few hundred feet further down the hill. It looks like Spokane Fire did a steep slope evacuation to get the patients up the hill. Do you have your game plan down for how your department does slope evacuations?
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.
If you remember the “Real Deal” rescue that occurred at Wallace Falls in Northeast Washington that we covered here a couple of weeks ago, then you will surely be interested in the follow up on it with an in depth look at thee operation. The article is written by Tom Vines and was brought to our attention by Mike Forbes from Spokane Fire.
And the elevator shaft wins! A Lexus SUV was driven in to an elevator shaft designed for vehicles in a parking garage. The problem was, there was no elevator car there. According to the articles, the parking garage has 4 citations against it for elevator problems in the past two years. The driver of the vehicle also has 11 drivers license suspensions against him. It’s like the perfect storm of where you don’t want your vehicle to be parked.
Anyhow, they had to go down the shaft and extricate one of the workers, then stand by while the vehicle was recovered.
Here are two links to the story, the first has a video, the second has pictures.
It seems that some builders have no foresight. For at least the second time in as many months, somebody has crashed through their porch flooring and into a well. This time it was under an overhang, so no aerial was able to be used…. and it was a 60 foot drop. This rope rescue occurred in Hendersonville, NC.
I imagine that these guys had the same problem as the guys doing a well rescue that we talked about a couple of weeks ago: the tripod is going to want to tip towards the direction of haul because of the resultant force being outside of the tripod footprint. Just looking at the pictures, it might have been possible to use the bottom of the porch column for a change of direction down low to help minimize that.
Also take note of the VERY long bights an the end line figure 8 knots. Those are going to eat up a lot of valuable real estate when trying to get in and out of the hole. The knot passing pulley is also going to eat up quite a bit of that same space. By tightening the bights and using a smaller pulley, it is possible to gain several inches of extra clearance where it is needed most.
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.
