Large Area Search Equipment

[JCRAIG]

I attended the Houston Safety & Survival Symposium and attended a class by Mike Smith, Butch Cobb, and others. They displayed a search rope that was flat and had a series of knots already made in the rop to indicate the length of travel at each point. Does anyone know where I can purchase that search rope?

[MrFreeze]

This might be a stretch, but you could always just buy a rope and tie knots in it.

If it was flat, it was probably webbing.

You might like it better with the distance knots, but I do good just to feel the rope with my fire gloves on, much less count overhand knots. We've trained without the knots, but not this way yet: Team of three. 2 ff's with ~15' personal ropes, 1 ff with the rope bag, probably 150-200'. Guy with the bag takes two and a half armlength grabs of rope (measures out ~15' of rope) then ties an overhand loop or butterfly knot. Other two ffs clip into that knot, search in big arcs out to end of 15' rope. As they do this, guy in charge (knotman) measures out ~15' more of rope from the bag, and ties another loop. When the 2 ffs return to the original knot, he will stretch out the next 15', they will unclip from the 1st, move up to the 2nd, and search. Rinse and repeat.

For a 30' diam circle around each knot a search has been completed. The next teams to come in know this because there are knots that say so. Each knot is a little less than 15' apart (so the arcs overlap a little) so you can count knots to judge distance.

Whatever system you utilize, be sure to anchor your rope anytime you change direction or angle. If not, when you walk out following the rope, or the next team walks in, any kind of hazard that was missed might be in the new path of the rope. Like a hooooooooooooooooole...

[BaFire2762]

The rope you are looking for is made of kevlar and it is called the RIT 900 I believe. It is a high tensile strength, can withstand high temperatures, and is cut resistant. It is kind of expensive as far as rope is concerned, somewhere around $1.10 a foot. If you check out Jim Crawford's website, www.rapidintervention.com, you should be able to find it somewhere in the equipment section.

[FireCritic]

Check out my Search line post under Rapid Intervention. The web site you want is www.ritrescuesystems.com . I have bought the equipment that you speak of for my department. Please let me know if you have any other information. I am not an employee of this company, however I am pleased with the product.

Rhett Fleitz
Firefighter/EMT
Roanoke Fire-EMS
FireFleitz@msn.com
E13-B