Technora highline… Check
proximity suit… Check
SCBA and gas meter… Check
Lashed timber high directional… Check
Large Testicles… Check
From the recent National Geographic show “Die Trying” on the Flying Over Fire episode .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L5sH3XzWXA
Being a fireman and a rope geek, the topic of emergency escape and belaying is a big one to me. So I’d like to share with you this video that was found, through rigorous searching of the internet, covering just those topics.
Should you be interested in the device (doubtful), the name of the company is shown later in the video.
http://http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f0a_1257472076
These two videos were posted previously, but the links have gone bad. So here they are again for you to see how things can go REALLY wrong if you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. Both are from Peru. Just so it’s out there again: If you are visiting Peru and they ask if you want to ride a highline, it’s probably in your best interest to politely decline.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unF2shRE2KY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VADsADLE0gY
Check out this article from Las Vegas. It’s about the new 550′ Ferris wheel that can hold over 1100 people and the article highlights some of the planning that went in to possible rescue situations.
Kudos to the Las Vegas FD tech rescue team for being proactive in the situation. It looks like, should something ever happen, that it will be a complex mix of lead climbing, aid climbing, and some team based lowering. The fact that the fire dept. was consulted at all during construction is pretty neat too. Anchors were placed inside each pod so that a system could be hooked up and 3 victims at a time can be lowered.
Neat stuff!
Thanks to my sister, Caity, for pointing this one out to us. It’s not rescue stuff, but be sure to check out her awesome website spiralspiritballooncompany.com. Lots of great sculptures there!
Here are two great videos from DRR Rescue posted on youtube that show how to construct a 1-1-1 picket system, which is three pickets placed in a row.
Two things stood out to me in these videos. First, I really like the system they used to tie the pickets together. I’ve seen a few different variations on the technique, most involving some sort of windlass to tighten the webbing. Doing that requires more hardware, as well as driving in another piece of rebar. The videos show what amounts to a non working 3:1 with webbing.
The second thing that really stood out was how much force this system was able to hold. They put over 6ooo lbs of force on the system. While the picket did flex a little bit, it did not noticeably pull forward in the ground. I’m anxious to try this in the rain soaked, clay dirt around my house!
Thanks again to DRR for sharing these with the world. Be sure to check out the tutorial section on the website as well as their field guide, that thing is full of great, easy to apply info. http://www.desertrescue.com
There is a lot to be said for how far technology has allowed us to go in the world of ropes as it relates to safety: Stronger yet smaller ropes, lightweight high strength aluminum hardware, etc… But is fun to cast our thoughts back to where the rope rescue world has ascended (that’s a pun) from. Check out the rescue drama in the youtube video below. It is from 1949 and was posted by Ron Holan on the Rope Access Technicians Network group on Facebook.
The neat part about this for me was that they didn’t use any carbiners or friction devices to lower the casualty. It was all done with friction wraps around their bodies and around rock outcrops. While this might not be how a rescue should be done now, given all of our available equipment, it is none the less a look at how a rescue can be done without any equipment.
Maybe you could use this video as an idea for a drill: Only use a Stokes basket and a rope, no hardware, to accomplish lowering a package down a building, catwalk, mountain, etc… Oh, and they weren’t using Prusiks either. They only had trust in each other!
Also pretty darn old school is this picture of Silver Spring VFD using the ladder truck for a high directional to get a Stokes basket off of the roof of a one story school and down to the ground. Thanks to our Florida friend Joe Schulman for findiong and sharing this one.
It’s hard to tell for sure from the picture, but it looks like the rope is just hard tied to the tip and the ladder is just craning the load. Similar to one of our previous posts HERE , it’s also another example of how it might be easy to access a patient via ladder and use a rope system to get them down.
Come out and try the newest equipment and techniques in rope rescue. Cost of the class is $295.
Email Kelly M Byrne at kelly@rescue2training.com or call 240-462-6610 for more information.
Neat video of a bear trying to traverse a high line to get at some food. Belay line not used:
Thanks to Collin Moon of Elevated Safety for pointing this one out to us.
We were messing around the other day with some variations on how to better perform the best way to get a vertically oriented basket up over a 90 degree edge, which is know alternately as the “Pike and Pivot” or “V Strap” technique.
The issue of effective, efficient edge protection for our ropes and webbing was given us a bit of a challenge until our resident old man (and connoisseur of Miller Lite on his days off) , Mike S, suggested that we try and use a Sked as edge protection. It’s smooth, tough, has plenty of places to tie it off, and is much wider than standard edge protection. We’ve dubbed it Skedge Protection.
It can only be described as having worked perfectly for this situation.
I have no idea what the long term durability would be if used as edge pro all of the time, but for what we were using it for, I’ll definitely grab it without a second thought next time.
Here is a comparison of rescues performed at different speeds. The first one is an actual rescue from down in Florida of a worker who was suspended in his fall arrest harness after the scaffolding he was on collapsed. The word from our sources who were on the scene informed us that it took 1.5 hours to perform this pickoff rescue. I was not personally there and can not speak first hand of the details, but I am told that it was a pretty straight forward scenario that just took a very long time to accomplish.
The good news is that it was successful, but had the victim been in distress, it might have been a different outcome. A pickoff should be one of the bread and butter operations of every rope team. On the scene is not the time to figure out where your attachments go to the victim, method of unweighting them from their system, etc… This should all be hammered out and drilled on well in advance.
Click here for the story and video:
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/02/10/scaffolding-collapse-traps-workers-in-ft-lauderdale/
The opposite end of the spectrum is this video, brought to our attention by Eric Ulner of Ropes that Rescue, of a rescue competition which includes pickoffs. These guys are FAST!!! It looks like the video is sped up, but this is just the end product of dozens of hours of disciplined practice.
While real world rescues obviously present situations you are unable to specifically PLAN for, you should always be PREPARED for what might come your way. Rescues don’t need to happen at competition speed, but that’s no excuse for taking an excessive amount of time, either.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to move somebody over water. Being a rope geek, I think it should always be done with rope. There might be some debate about whether it always the right answer, but I would argue that almost anything would be better than what transpired in the pictures below.
A sick passenger on a cruise liner was being transferred to a smaller boat to be taken to shore for medical treatment. She was placed on stretcher and transferred to the smaller boat while both boats were under way !
Things are going along just fine (but just look at the snow and ice on top of the smaller boat):
Moments later, rescuer Bob “Butterfingers” Johnson knows that he will never, ever get rid of his nickname. This is the victim taking her unintentional swim test in 27 degree water:
Read the lurid details of the incident here:
For another option of getting people off of a boat, check out the rope operation called a “Breeches Buoy”. It’s the older brother of the high line and was used for getting sailors to shore off of ships that had wrecked near the shore. It is basically a high line with all controls for lowering and retrieving the victim based on the shore.
