By Jim Read
The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York)
Copyright 2007 Post-Standard
All Rights Reserved
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — With tripods and pulleys and lots and lots of rope, 24 firefighters are learning techniques for rescuing people trapped in difficult-to-reach places.
“People get themselves in jams and then call the fire department,” said Bill Mosher, one of the instructors for the 32-hour course that began Friday and ends today. While the techniques are adapted from mountain rescue, “vertical rescue has everything to do with vertical,” Mosher said. “It has nothing to do with mountains.”
The techniques are needed for such things as construction sites, falls into tanks and cases where people get stuck on antennas, Mosher said.
After a day of classroom instruction Friday, the class practiced Saturday and Sunday at the Syracuse University steam plant at Almond and Burt streets. The firefighters used the tripods and pulleys to send medics down to a patient, and then lift the stretcher out of the space.
Today, they will further test what they’ve learned at Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency’s incinerator on Rock Cut Road in Onondaga.
“It isn’t something we do every day,” said Syracuse Fire Lt. Dan McCauley, one of the four officers of the city’s rescue company taking the course.
Syracuse firefighters have performed the occasional industrial site rescue and have pulled workers from tight spaces at sewage treatment plants, said Capt. Doug Whittaker.
“You can’t come up and say, “Sorry, we can’t get you out of here,”’ Whittaker said. “The rescue company is the SWAT team of the fire department,” called on to handle all types of rescues, he said. “Some of these things happen only once in a career.”
The training is being conducted by Rope Rescue, a company founded by Pat Rhodes, a retired member of the Phoenix, Ariz., Fire Department. Rhodes and Mosher, who also is a firefighter with the DeWitt Fire Department, taught the course to members of the DeWitt, Syracuse, East Syracuse, Jamesville, Onondaga Hill and Syracuse University fire departments.
DeWitt became interested in rope rescue last year after doing an inventory of the department’s ropes and discovering some of them were more than 20 years old, said Chief Gary MacLachlan.
National standards were set for rope rescue operations in 2000, said Syracuse Fire Department Deputy Chief Robert Bratt. “Not just standards, but expectations have changed since 9/11,” he said.
The class is one of three needed to become certified as a rope rescue technician, Mosher said. Those certified can handle almost any situation, he said.