Learning from others’ mistakes is something we can and should do, particularly when it pertains to rescue work. The situations below are prime examples of this. Take a minute to laugh a little at their misfortune (I’m pretty sure nobody died), but then try and absorb what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen to you.
The first example of things going bad could have been solved by a couple of easy solutions like: knowing how to tie a knot, having somebody who knows how to tie a knot look over your system, use a backup line that is tied with an appropriate knot, etc… There’s a trend there somewhere.
Knowing how your system is going to react when acted upon is a REALLY good skill to have when performing rope rescue operations. See if you can figure out what is going to happen in the video below when the helicopter pulls up to lift the rescue package:
Here at Rescue 2 Training we are pretty big fans of getting our rope systems up off of the ground for the edge transition. Combine a low rope over the edge with not knowing what your rope system is going to do when you load it (as mentioned above) and you have recipe for a bad time. Here is what the finished, face smashing product (and Bad Edge Transition Hall of Fame member) looks like when you pull it out of the oven:
I originally posted this over two years ago (HERE). Today is the fourth anniversary of FF Mark Falkenhan losing his life while searching above the fire. As a guy who searches above the fire pretty often while at work, the lessons to be learned from this tragedy cross my mind pretty frequently. There’s always lessons to be learned from a LODD, but this one hit close to home for me, both geographically and operationally.
Original Post:
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.
No matter how cool your wife is with rope stuff and your mastery of fear while working at height, I’m sure you will find that it is always cooler to you than it is to her. While you may be dying to impress her with your ability to tie an Alpine Butterfly with one hand or some other type of awesomeness, I think you’ll find it leads to more trouble than it is worth.
Take for instance the fellow who wanted to be flown in by crane to impress the girl he was proposing to. It does not end well. Take note of a few things here: The first is that we have one crane supporting the boom of another in order to lift a one person load ! I’m not a crane guy, but I can’t imagine that this is advocated for in any safe rigging manual. The other issue is the sling itself. A simple choker wasn’t cutting it. That thing needed to be wrapped a few times in order to keep it from slipping up the boom. Just keep that in the back of your mind next time you sling an anchor that has the potential for a lateral load. It’s hard to tell, but it also looks like it might have been short jacked in the back.
Below are some examples of woman humoring their mans desire to strut his peacock feathers on rope
One of them looks like they are having fun:
Below is another example of 50% of the participants thinking “This is the coolest thing ever!” Although there actually is a pretty cool backstory to it HERE
Cool only because they managed to get an artificial high directional in the mix:
I wonder if the chicks in the pictures are bride-zillas about the rigging. You know like compromising rigging angles in order to get the best pictures, “does this harness make me look fat” etc… Just thinking out loud. Stay Safe!
Take a look at the video below. While performing a rescue, one rescuer was swept away by the moving water. You can see that the rescuer is not panicking and is following his training. He has his feet up, facing downstream and is on his back. After a couple of unsuccessful throw bag attempt he rolls over, faces up stream, gets a ferry angle and starts swimming towards the shore. When he sees a rescuer running along side of him with a throw bag, he gets ready, grabs the rope and is swung into the shore while the thrower assumes the correct position to act as an anchor. Good job all around.
One other small, but cool point is that when the final thrower tosses the rope behind the rescuer and out of reach, he simply runs a little faster to drag the rope right to the rescuer. Cool technique that probably isn’t taught many places, but I would guess comes from a lot of drilling.
There are a lot of reasons to be proficient in technical rescue. Here is a picture of the rescuer with his family that his wife put up on Facebook. Seems like three good reasons to me:
Let’s face it, the fire service is not really screaming for any new acronyms; particularly one that rehashes another acronym but with a slight twist. Yet, here I am proposing a new acronym that is a twist on an old one.
One of the more noted acronyms when calling a Mayday is LUNAR. Location, Unit, Name, Air, Resources needed. While it is adequate, I’ve always wondered why “Air” was on the list. It’s not as if we’ll say: “He’s got plenty of air, let’s let him wait a while” or “He’s got plenty of air, let’s leave this RIT bottle here. I’m sure we’ll be done before he runs out”. It doesn’t really strike me as all that important.
I’ve also wondered why it has “Resources” there. While it might be chic in fire service management to use a word like “resource”, if I were in a jam the last thing I would be thinking about would be using a word like “resource” for what I need. I need HELP, not a resource. I imagine Resource is there, along with Air quite frankly, to help make a neat sounding acronym.
I think LUNAR is adequate, but I am proposing a new one based on my past experience as a truckie:
LUNCH
Location
Unit
Name
Conditions
Help needed
That’s right, LUNCH. Who doesn’t think about lunch… particularly at a firehouse. Whole days revolve around it sometime and most guys never miss it. It’s unlike LUNAR in that, while the moon is out every night to possibly remind you, if you don’t leave the firehouse at night (truckie), you never get to remind yourself of it.
The one concession toward having a clever acronym is that I have also thought that adding your name in there was a little pointless as well. “Oh, it’s FF Byrne… F#ck him. We’ll get there when we get there”. Without it though, we wouldn’t have the mildly smartass LUNCH acronym.
So… Next time you sit down at lunch, give yourself a 3 second refresher in calling in a mayday for yourself. For example:
“MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. Rescue Team B, FF Byrne on the Bravo side of the kitchen table, I am out of A1 sauce for my dry steak the engine overcooked. I need A1 sauce and a cookbook for the engine to read the future. ”
Simple as that! Seriously though, it doesn’t have to take long and it keeps your mind in the game. And if anybody can think of another word for Help or Resource that begins with the letter K, we can get rid of “Name” as well and just go with LUCK.
I haven’t posted anything in a bit, but here is a quickie… This video shows a guy cutting a rope with another piece of rope. While his is intent is to show you that it can be done if you need to, I think it also shows that it can be done even if you didn’t want it to happen.
There’s a good reason why we don’t want an excess of moving rope on static rope. Enjoy.
Take a look at the first video in the link below. It’s a news story out of Fort Wayne, IN that I assume was supposed to be a simple feel good piece highlighting the local rope rescue team. If you want to jump right to the good stuff, go to the 2:10 mark in the video. What you will see is a really big, really expensive mousetrap.
I do feel a little bit bad about Monday morning quarterbacking this video… but not enough to cause me not to do it.
First, the critical point at the Kootenay Carriage. It would appear that there are two track lines, and two upper control lines (although no lower control lines) with tails going down to the rescuer and victim. The Kootenay, however, remains a critical point. Do I think it will fail? No. But we rig for failure caused by human factors, not equipment factors. Should that Kootenay fail though, the basket could take a major and possibly fatal swing fall.
Second, there is difficulty with attempting to get the basket back up over the edge after they took a ride down and back up the track lines. The reason given in the report is that the “ropes stretched”. While I don’t doubt they stretched, take a look at the link the news story below the youtube video. The second video is extra footage they got while doing the shoot. It is obvious from watching it that they were going to have this problem. While initially loading the basket over the edge you can see how far it drops down when it is initially loaded. It’s about the same distance that they are below the edge when they come back up.
Rope stretch? Maybe. Foreseeable problem? More likely. I’m curious if the attendant could have stood on the end of the basket in order to raise the head up and over the edge. Also a factor is the excessively tall bridle they use. Judging by the video, I’m guessing from the bottom of the basket to the top of the carriage to be six feet in height.
Third, you can see from this picture just how close the resultant is to being outside of the footprint of the tripod. When the track lines were tensioned to raise the load, I’m curious if the friction in the pulleys caused them to temporarily move the resultant until they found their center again.
Fourth, two statements made during this gave me a bit of heartburn. The first is that the “white rope didn’t work the way it was supposed to.” Ropes work exactly as they are rigged. Unless it broke under tension due to unseeable chemical degradation, it was rigging failure. It’s hard to tell what the white lines were rigged to, but I’m guessing they got pulled up off of whatever they were on. The second statement is that “nobody was dropped…they were lowered”. If it was unexpected and uncontrolled, it was a drop. Maybe I would have been inclined to say the same thing out of embarrassment while on camera, but lets call it what it is.
Last, neither the reporter in the basket, nor the one on the roof seen just before the tripod topples, have a helmet on. If I were running this show, it probably would have been an afterthought for me too. Having seen this video, I’d be willing to bet it would be a fatal blow if a tripod toppling like that hits you in the head, helmet or not.
I do applaud Ft. Wayne TRT for allowing this to air (if in fact they had a choice). It’s sometimes hard to admit a goof up. It’s even harder to have it on tape for guys to critique from a distance without knowing the full circumstances (me). The least we can do is try to learn from it.
Take a look at the video sent to us by Larry Mullin of Fairfax County FD. The video shows a technique used when attempting to rescue a suicidal person who is about to jump off of a bridge. Apparently this is for when somebody like, I don’t know, a trained psychologist is unavailable and the jumper is patient enough to wait idly by as you set up two rope rescue systems. I’d love to know what you do after you have them. Raise them back up? Lower everybody into the water? Who knows?
I’ve never had to do this type of “rescue”, but I don’t want to be hanging on to a person who wants to die for an extended period of time with no other means of attaching to them. If you’d like to know why, take a look at the second video. Which will also serve as a good pitch for some type of auto locking descender.
Well… near it anyhow. We’re happy to announce our latest open enrollment class on September 13 and 14 in Fairfax, VA, just 30 minutes from Washington, DC.
Come join us for our latest presentation of Modern Technologies in Rope Rescue. Using the newest techniques on the newest equipment in an urban setting, come learn ideas that have been proven and tested in the real world in both urban and wilderness settings.
Topics included this time around include:
Use of the AZTEK kit to pass knots, perform a pickoff, basket attending, a whole lot more
In depth discussion and use of the Two Tension Rope System utilizing the MPD.
Use of the Arizona Vortex high directional in the urban environment
The Rescue 2 Training original: The Appalachian Doortex! For urban anchoring and elevator rescue.
…And much more.
Cost of the class is $295 per person.
Please contact Kelly Byrne at 240-462-6610 or kelly@rescue2training.com for registration information or questions.
