Day 9: Rescue Rangers

In the morning I was able to perform my remote rescue. I had a big screw up when the clip fell off the edge of my extension pole. The self-closing clip nailed my victim in the arm on the way down, though he was a pretty good sport about it. Eventually I got it back together and got my rescue done by lunch.

Our class wasn’t moving very quickly. This was partly because we had guys who had to redo their rescues. But we also had a couple of guys in the class who just couldn’t get the steps down. They appeared to be watching the demonstrations, they passed the written tests, but when they got up on the towers it was as if everything they’d seen up to that point ceased to make sense. It was incredibly frustrating just to watch them. We were not allowed to coach people from the ground so I had to keep my mouth shut as they hung equipment upside down or stared bewildered at a set of carabineers. Further, both of these guys were close to sixty years old. I visited with one of them who complained that his body ached from the previous two days of climbing.

But there was an important lesson to be learned here. As I watch their victims dangle helplessly I realized the opposite of what it meant to trust someone with your life. Keep in mind that the harnesses that stop someone from falling are not designed to keep a person in that position for long. You have about fifteen to twenty minutes before suspension trauma starts to set in. The harness will compress the body in such a way that your circulation is cut off to the exterior limbs and all sorts of bad things can happen, including death. The gentlemen in question, and there were only two of them, were taking much longer than 20 minutes to get to the victims. Fortunately the victims were conscious and they could rig their positioning lanyard to make a saddle that they could stand on and get pressure off of the constriction points. But had they been knocked out, they would be in a world of hurt. Watching these guys I concluded that I would never go into a tower with either of them. In a rescue situation they would be almost as dangerous as no help at all. The instructors gave them a few opportunities to get the rescue right but they both failed.

After remote rescue we moved on to the pick-off rescue. With this one the victim is hanging suspended from a rope, like the guy to the right. You then have to slide yourself down a rope to the guy, attach his harness to your rope rider and then lower both yourself and the victim to the ground. Before you hit the ground you want to swing the victim so he lands sitting down. The more bends in the body the better. The reason for this is that blood clots can form in the legs due to poor circulation. Putting kinks in the body keeps the un-oxygenated blood from flooding the system too quickly.

At the end of the day the instructors gathered us around and told us that the two guys who weren't getting it wouldn’t be joining us for Friday’s exercises. I personally was relieved as the rescues would move along quicker. The instructors pointed out that this wasn’t the first time guys had failed this portion of the course and that we should encourage these guys to return on Monday. The course includes many other certifications, such as OSHA training and electrical equipment training.

I looked over the course application, and among the requirements you must sign off on are a possible mobility test and the ability to climb and be physically fit. While these requirements are fairly obvious, I don’t know if the language is clear enough. Perhaps the school should be more explicit that this is a physically demanding course and applicants should understand that it requires complicated tasks at dangerous heights. Otherwise you may be setting people up for a career that they can’t handle.