ladder

All posts tagged ladder

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.

falkenhan

 

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.

Falkenhan LODD ATF Report

Balt Co LODD internal report

Here is a video from the ATF from the modeling on this fire:

Things start going bad around the 21:45 mark of this video:

 

 

Towards the end of the video is are two alternate scenarios showing what might have happened with different doors being closed.

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.

old school rope rescue

The recent rescue by the South Walton Fire District’s Technical Rescue team in Florida is a great example of rescue where it is easy to access the victim by something as simple as a ladder, but where a rope based system might still be the best alternative for getting them down to the ground safely.

You can see in the pictures that the guys on the ground are able to guide the basket most of the way to the ground while it is supported on  the ladder and being lowered with rope.

Two quick points: If possible, I would have tried to line up my ladder with my anchors so that it was all in plumb. Maybe there is a good reason they didn’t. It’s hard to tell from just a picture.  Secondly, you can see how easily they overcame this by just having a rescuer on the roof do a very minor deflection by just pulling on the rope. It’s a good example of knowing how to easily overcome a problem by knowing a few physics tricks.

http://www.waltonsun.com/news/construction-worker-saved-by-swfd-1.297343#

Not all rope calls are high pucker factor incidents of life and death. Sometimes it’s just the simplest way of getting  the patient to the ground. Good job, guys.

 

swfd easy access

If you like Artificial High Directionals, but don’t have a lot of money to spare, consider improvising one. Feel free to use whatever you might have on hand. Perhaps a ladder from Home Depot or if you are looking to go the free route, how about just using a couple of friends?

 

Enjoy!