rope access

Here are some new AZV uses we at R2T have been testing to see the real world practicality of.  There are some earlier proof of concept pictures on the multimedia page, but these were done in exposure with a two person load. They’re all versions of what we’ve decided to call the Appalachian Doortex (APD), an obvious attempt at getting some East Coast love into the rope world.

The purpose of these APD is to create either an anchor, a high directional, or both simultaneously in the urban environment. The initial thought was for use in elevators, but can obviously work to create an anchor anywhere there is a solid block wall surrounding a door. We run A LOT of stalled elevators in in the city where I work, 15 a day is about average in our geographically small city. Not many require any rope work at all, but the one’s that do can be a real pain. Have you ever looked in an elevator lobby for anchors or a high directional? Not much around. That’s the problem we were trying to solve.

The “Ram’s Head” is the first version we came up with. In this configuration we hooked both MPDs right to the head of the APD; there was no guying, tying, or anything. The foot of the lazy leg was not resting against the opposite wall. Aside from a very minor initial settling in of the APD, it did not move during the operation. It was loaded with a two person load that was raised and lowered several times. One of the MPDs was hooked up in a fashion that caused it to bind against the head of the AZV a bit because it allowed us to have the operating handle facing outward. Because of the angle of the rope leaving the MPD into the elevator shaft, this very minor binding was felt not to be an issue.

Next up is an Upside Down APD, with no clever name given yet. Maybe the Appalachian Lean-To (ALT)? Yup we’ll go with that for now.  Just another way to make an anchor/HD combo. Also loaded with a two person load, operated up and down a bunch.

Here is the close up of the dual MPD anchoring on the Appalachian Lean-To.

Below are two pictures of what we used to keep the the Appalachian Lean-To from kicking back should it have wanted to. It didn’t want to. We had a dynomometer in there to see if there was any force trying to push the ALT away from the opening. The needle didn’t move at all during the operation. We were pulling against an extra leg section of an AZV run through two 4×6 blocks with holes drilled in them to keep the leg section from resting on a small, roll prone contact point on the hoistway doors. We’ve been calling them “Brace Blocks” (Appalachian Brace Blocks?) They worked really well. I suspect they can be used to help span doorways in buildings to create quick, simple anchors in a hallway.

While we have not tested a center pulled AZV leg to failure yet, this one was pulled to 500 lbs without any visible deflection. Further testing on this configuration will be conducted in the near future and we’ll let you know what we find out.

If anybody has any thoughts, questions or comments on this, or would like further training on operating on rope in an urban environment please feel free to leave a comment below or send Kelly an email directly at rescue-2@comcast.net.

Can a bowline with a Yosemite finish be a recipe for disaster? According to the video below  the answer is a resounding yes. That is, of course, if you are prone to loosely and incorrectly tying and dressing your knots. I think there are quite a few knots that would come undone given those set of circumstances. You can read  about the inspiration for this posting of mine at these two climbing forums:

Rockclimbing.com

Supertopo.com

Does this mean that it is a bad knot? I would argue that it is (k)not. It could be argued that it might not be the best thing to use as a harness tie in for people who are only using it for climbing. But to argue that one usage against the effectiveness and efficiency of the many variations of this knot when used for rescue, seems a like it might be limiting yourself. For instance, you can tie on bowline on the bight with a Yosemite to create a quick rope anchor, around a tree for example, with a bight to be used for connecting your friction device to; or use a Portuguese bowline to anchor an A frame as shown in the last video. I would(k)not discount a whole series of knots just because one variation of it does not fit one specific use. I might be preaching to the choir, but I still wanted to get it out there. Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any thoughts on the matter.

Here is the first video of how not to tie a bowline with a Yosemite

Here is are two video sfrom R2T friend Eric Campbell. One on how to tie a “snap bowline” with a properly tied Yosemite and the other, a couple of bowline variations for anchoring

Lastly, you can see in this video, around the :17 mark, a Portuguese bowline (with a bight and Yosemite) used to anchor the A Frame and create a rearward facing bight to attach the 3:1 tensioning system to. To do this with a family of 8 knots would take forever, not be nearly as clean, and is sure to eat up a ton of rope.

While I am not one usually prone to checking something out because of an ad on television, I have to admit that I went straight to the website of Krazy Glue after seeing a window washer stunt where a guy was suspended by two shackle couplers glued together with Krazy Glue.

I was interested to see the rigging involved, so went to their behind the scenes section. It looks like they used a two rope system with the belay hooked to the dorsal D ring and the main attached to the front. There looked to be a sewn loop jumper between the shackles should the glue have failed. You can see the behind the scene shots on their Facebook page here:

http://www.facebook.com/krazyglue/app_131841236955666

 

Take notice that, while the footage is sped up, there are no breaks in the camera editing, it’s one shot from start to finish. I’ve never had that kind of luck with any glue I’ve used, but I guess it’s hard to deny what they did here.

Monday morning QB alert!!!   Just nit picking, but I thought the belay could have been kept a little bit tighter.

The rope rescue team from Bonneville, WA gets it’s practice by helping out during the shutdown of the Bonneville Dam. The members are sent down the side to take care of trees growing out of the walls as well as being on standby while biologists are on rope to do their own bit of inspection.

It seems like a good way for the team get some really great on rope training experience in the place where they are most likely to get a call.

 

Article Here

 

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.

Manly Link

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.

Video of pickoff

Article about the rescue

My kind of guy. Rescuer calls it “fun”

 

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.

 

Vide0s and stills of cliff rescue

 

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.

 

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/164983/two-injured-after-car-falls-down-garage-elevator-shaft?ap=1&MP4

 

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120717/upper-east-side/car-falls-down-elevator-shaft-upper-east-side-parking-garage

 

So… not being there it is hard to know, but from looking at the pictures and the videos from around the web it seems that maybe these window washers stuck waaaay up on the 42nd floor (but only a floor below an outside terrace) could have been rescued a bit quicker and with a much higher degree of safety than what you see here. I’m sure the guy on the scaffolding who has had this happen to him two times before this, has seen all the ways to do this rescue. Time for a new job for that guy.

I am aware of the friction between the FDNY the NYPD ESU team, but 4o minutes using a “diamond blade angle grinder” to cut the window and haul these guys in through a window doesn’t seem like the best way to do business. Why add the potential for falling glass to this operation if you don’t need to? I think there is a time and a place for cutting a window, but this just doesn’t seem like it.

If you have any comments, feel free to leave them below.

Here is a short video of the operation:

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=90051&sitesection=nydailynews&VID=23657684

A couple of pics:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=8732245

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.

http://www.cntower.ca/en-CA/Plan-Your-Visit/Attractions/EdgeWalk.html

Looks like synchronized swimming or something:

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.

http://www.cbs12.com/news/top-stories/stories/vid_1105.shtml

 

Maybe the dog needs to be trained like this one: