Strangest Specialized Rescue???

[billy]

Describe your strangest specialized rescue. Any changes in operations or eqt. afterwards?

[Litch]

There is an industry next door to my small, rural fire co that manufacures road markings - the kind the highway department glues to the road. One year there were some temporary workers filling bags with a special gravel the company used. There was a hopper on one end of a loading dock. The worker filling the bags stood on the ground under the hopper while another worker used a front end loader to fill the hopper. The man operating the loader knocked the hopper off the loading dock, which of course fell on the man who had been filling bags. The man was pinned under the weight of the hopper, which was partially full of the stones. Several companies responded to provide enough cribbing to support the hopper and the front end loader, which had one wheel off the dock and was precariously tilted over the victim. We brought in a heavy rescue to tie the loader off to. Then someone noticed a row of 55 gal drums along the side of the building that the truck's exhaust was facing - Toluene! Fortunately the rescue was shut down before any drums were overheated. We ended up requesting a crane to lift the hopper. As luck would have it, there was already a crane on the road heading to a job in our area. It was diverted to us, and in relatively short order, the hopper was stabilized and we dug the patient out of the gravel. As soon as he could move, he crawled out from his pile of stones - we could not even get him on to the backboard, he was so anxious to get out of there. He ended up with a lower back injury, but no other injuries.