Apparently, you can get all of the thrills of rope access, rope rescue, just being at height, etc… without any of the training. I’ve got no affiliation with this, but thought that it was interesting just the same. Should you want that stomach turning feeling of looking over the edge of a high drop, you can do it for about $200.
Of course, I’d rather use that money to buy a new bosuns chair and get paid to do work at that height as I’m sure most people reading this would. Of course, that’s what makes the rope community a bit unique.
The Technical Rescue Team from Gresham, OR rescued a family Pitbull from the wall of a quarry after the dog had gone missing for a couple of days. The dog was spotted by quarry personnel.
Listening to the video, it seems the team used a ladder as a high directional to get out over the edge and keep from knocking down debris that might cause the dog to lose it’s footing.
One neat point was that the local Humane Society told the rescuer being lowered to bring along a T Shirt from the dog’s family. At first I was thinking it was for some sort of crazy improvised harness. Turns out it was so the dog could sniff it and know that the rescuer was one of the pack. I wouldn’t have thought to do that. I guess that’s why it pays to have subject matte experts around.
Thanks to Collin Moon of Elevated Safety for tuning us in to this story.
Climbing ranger Nick Hall from Mt Ranier died last week after falling more than 3000 feet down the side of Mt Ranier while rescuing 4 climbers who were in need of assistance. All of those in need of rescue survived.
The video below is a quick news piece about the incident. Of interest to me are the comments below the article on whether or not people should pay for their own rescues. There is one unknown poster who lays out some pretty good arguments that people should not pay for there own rescues; R2T happens to agree with that stance.
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.
While thoughts of highlines are what occupies the brain of rope geeks as they go to bed, Pat Rhodes does a very nice job point out some of the finer, lesser observed points of highline construction. The video below is a from the Rescue Response Gear TV Series they have on their website. In addition to the highlines, there are also lots of great videos on less complex subjucts, with the same great breakdown of the concepts into digestible bits.
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!
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