Recent high angle incedent

[Brtengr]

Last Wednesday night my department was toned out to stand by for a bridge over the Missisippi river at the edge of our district. It came in as a suicidal subject, and quickly got upgraded to come onto the scene and hold short of all the squad cars and ambulance already on the scene. We responded and thought the whole time the guy would be on the deck of the bridge and we'd either do nothing or load him into the ambulance with no incident. As it turned out when we walked up to the scene the patient was below the bridge about 30 feet, was unconcious and handcuffed to a railing by a few sherrif's deputies. There were already two boats in the water from the fire department across the river. Access to the lower pier was via a cage ladder over the side of the bridge deck and that's how the patient got down there. As we evaluated the situation we decided that it would be best to lower the victim to a waiting boat via manpower and a stokes basket and take him across the river to an Ambulance. We called for our department's rescue truck and while a paramedic climbed down the ladder to evaluate the patient, a car wreck happened in the other lane of the bridge, adding excitement to the whole mess we had started. Our rescue truck quickly arrived and we set up to use the stokes. We took 150' of life safety rope and three firemen down to the pier and had a few guys up top and lots of cops. While still evaluating down below, the department with the boats in the water sent two companies and a batallion chief to the bridge to assist. To make a long story short, when they arrived with better equipment than us we changed our plan of attack and got rid of the stokes. We tied a swiss seat on the patient and placed him on a backboard with spider straps, and then wrapped him in a sked's (sp?) unit. We used a tower ladder extended out over the bridge to set up a 4:1 mechanical advantage system and an extra safety line from the patien's swiss seat and the sked's and hoisted him up to the deck of the bridge. All said the rescue took about and hour and fifteen minutes. I had never been involved in an actual high-angle rescue before this and had only trained with the equipment a few times. All in all it was a successful rescue and the patient is doing fine. I just wanted to share this with the rest of you rescue maniacs out there.

Thanks,
Lee

[Litch]

Unless the basket stretcher you were going to use had leg dividers and would not accommodate a long back board, I would pefer the basket stretcher for the raise. I am quite leery about depending on the (I assume)velcro spider straps to hold a patient during that kind of a lift. Was the patient unconscious the whole time? Since he was felt to be suicidal, what if he started undoing straps while he was being lifted?

[billy]

What produced the unconciousness? Thanks for sharing the info. Anyone else with experiences?

[Brtengr]

The subject was on anti-depressants and had been drinking, that caused his unconciousness. About the backboard and spider straps, we put the subect in a swiss seat, and then on the back board. He was then wrapped in the skeds basket, I guess you would call it. I hadn't seen one of these before this rescue. If you want to see a picture of one you can go to cmcrescue.com and look one up. They are quite a neat piece of equipment. I'd love for our department to get one.

Thanks,
Lee

[ALSfirefighter]

Sounds like pretty good thinking to me. The SKED was definately a good idea, it would keep his arms and legs under control in the event he came around. He would have been severely disorientated, and then agitated once you got him up on the bridge. The only thing I think I would have done if I did it your way, is to put a extra regular harness on him, and possibly even a full one, to have a high secure part to hood the back-up line onto him and the main line onto the SKED.
Other wise, I'd probably would have used to the stokes, and depending on the type of bridge construction, used it to do most of the lift work for me if I could. With a/ or the back up line secured to the bridge itself.

Congrats on a successful rescue.

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The above is my opinion only and doesn't reflect that of any dept/agency I work for, deal with, or am a member of. :D

[Temptaker]

Congrats on the sucessful rescue.

One thing puzzles me though...

Originally posted by Brtengr As it turned out when we walked up to the scene the patient was below the bridge about 30 feet, was unconcious and handcuffed to a railing by a few sherrif's deputies. There were already two boats in the water from the fire department across the river. Access to the lower pier was via a cage ladder over the side of the bridge deck and that's how the patient got down there.

If the sherrif's deputies managed to handcuff this guy to the railing why didn't they just bring him up in the first place?

[LilSmokie]

:eek:

[ResQFF]

In response to Litch's posting.

I would assume that they would use crossing lashing of webbing for extra strength. Raising or Lowering I would NEVER rely on just Velcro straps

[lutan1]

Seeing that photo of the firehose going over the bridge reminds me of a recent incident we were called to for a person over a cliff. (Slope of around about 70 degrees)

The local fire dept and ambulance service got there before us, so instead of waiting, they tied a length of 38mm lay flat hose to a tree and went down hand over hand to the casualty!

What's the load rating of a fire hose?

Can we spell L.O.D.D.?
:(

[MtnRsq]

Lutan - Interesting note re: your recent incident.

As you noted - these types of things get rescuers killed/injured. It seems to be part of the, "We gotta do something" syndrome. Part of the rescue business is risk management and it is always disturbing when folks forget this fact. I would guess that there wasn't a significant amount of exposure below the subject (the reality of going hand-over-hand down a hose if there is another 200' of cliff to the bottom usually dissuades such ventures).

Improvisation can be a wonderful "tool" but you have to know when to draw the line.

I would hazard a guess that the hose would work as a "hand rail" if you didn't have much load on it or subject it to any significant dynamic fall forces.

Was the patient raised on a rope system?

[lutan1]

No rope work involved.

They hiked him out about 100 metres in a stokes litter and put him on a boat and took him around to the jetty in town and loaded him into the waiting ambulance....

[fyrfitr42]

Sounds like the afore mentioned SKED evac worked well!! My only addition would be a rescuer to "attend" the sked as it was raised in the likely (the patient was drunk) event the patient was to vomit. The attendant could be armed with a hand actuated portable suction device such as the V-Vac.