Rescue rigging

[peds]

A bit of fun for my crowd today at the 2nd annual Rope Rescue Interoperability Workshop in Dublin. As a mountain rescue team we are more used to dealing with rocks, cliffs, trees, and the natural world, but it's most interesting to be dropped into a more industrial setting to see if our systems and procedures will work on girders, gantries, sewers, that sort of thing.

 

Not many good pictures, but we were short handed and pretty busy!

 

Dublin Fire Brigade training centre

 

Haul a search dog and handler up into this abandoned building, locate the casualty (broken tib and fib), package them, lower them back down.

 

(Sadly, no photos of us hauling this search dog and handler up to where they needed to be, but isn't he a handsome chap all the same.)

 

Underground rave in this mock-up sewer system, suspected overdose. Wrestle the stretcher through the pipes, grab the casualty, haul her aloft again. 

 

 

Ah no, some bellend has dropped a big chunk of iron on this poor sod. Best lift it off and try to get his heart started again. 

 

 

Tricky enough with not many hands available, two twin rope haul systems either side of the weight to lift, then carefully pay out on one to walk it a safe distance away from the casualty. 

 

Top craic, we were here last year for the first version, and were thrilled to be invited back for round 2. Already looking forward to next year.

 

Edited September 21, 2024 by peds

[skc101fc]

Great to see Greg Marah, Douglas Forest and Garden, involved with this one. He organised an event called Trauma in the Trees probably about seven years ago now, which covered both aerial rescue, and the most stunningly memorable first response training for our sort of catastrophic injuries, I've ever seen. Great stuff. He's also a supplier, with a try before you buy attitude, of top class arborist kit in county Cork,  SW Ireland.  

Events and training like this are worth the weight in gold for giving real life experience in  emergency situations, when panic just wants to take over the brain and stop you observing the whole scene.

[peds]

9 minutes ago, skc101fc said:

Great to see Greg Marah, Douglas Forest and Garden, involved with this one. He organised an event called Trauma in the Trees probably about seven years ago now, which covered both aerial rescue, and the most stunningly memorable first response training for our sort of catastrophic injuries, I've ever seen. Great stuff. He's also a supplier, with a try before you buy attitude, of top class arborist kit in county Cork,  SW Ireland.  

Events and training like this are worth the weight in gold for giving real life experience in  emergency situations, when panic just wants to take over the brain and stop you observing the whole scene.

 

Man, I wish you'd have told me this at 6am today, I'd have tried to make a bit more time to chat with the vendors there. Douglas forest and garden was there, Petzl, someone else, and my friend and colleague Mark at Safety Strand. But we just didn't have time to mingle with anyone, unfortunately. I've bought a couple of things online from him.

 

Sounds like a great exercise yer man Greg Marah organised, and it's exactly the kind of thing people need to spend more, more, more time doing. 

 

We used one wheel of his van as an anchor for one half of our twin twin haul system. Don't think we left much of a dent.

[skc101fc]

6am? The only time I see this now,  months shy of 60 yrs old, is when I have to get up for the first piss of the day. 

Yep, you're right, train, train and train again til it becomes second nature, and you're not scrabbling about trying to find the cheat sheets. 

To anyone offered the chance of getting on events like these, take it willingly. Your bleeding out buddy will thank you forever.

[peds]

Yeah, 2h45m drive from our base in Sligo so an early enough start, and we had to stop briefly to herd some escaped cattle on the road. That's life in rural Ireland, I suppose.