By Art Bloomer
You’re the officer today on Engine 2, and your shift has been pretty much routine fire alarm runs with a few emergency medical calls. You are just about to sit down for lunch and you hear that familiar click on the house speaker. “Attention Engine 2, respond to 123 Main Street for a reported injured worker at a construction site.” As you and your crew head to the engine, you remember that a few new houses are being built in that area and think that it may be a laceration or a fall injury.
(1) A structure can collapse for many reasons, possibly trapping occupants in voids created during the collapse. Some victims may still be on or near the surface, lightly entrapped, and accessible to first responders. It could take special training and equipment to rescue those trapped in the voids. (Photos by author.)
As you respond to the incident, dispatch indicates that the injured party call is possibly an entrapment. As you turn down the street, you see a lot of activity as workers are scrambling to get a backhoe through the front yard and into the space between two homes under construction. As you and your crew leave the engine and start to follow the backhoe, you can see an excavation that appears to have had a collapse of some soil.
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A few workers are frantically trying to dig out one of their fellow workers who is trapped in the dirt above his chest from a collapse of the spoils pile. Meanwhile, the backhoe has made its way behind you and the operator is yelling for you to get out of the way so he can dig the worker out. Two of your crew have jumped in the hole with shovels to help dig out the worker.
Suddenly, as the backhoe operator is setting his outriggers, the remaining loose dirt around the hole collapses into the hole, completely burying the original trapped worker and entrapping two more workers and one of your crew who jumped into the hole.
More Training Needed?
Let’s stop this scenario here and see how this could play itself out. If it had indeed gotten to this point, it’s likely that you and your crew had none or very little training in recognizing and mitigating a trench/excavation collapse, an all-too-common situation in the fire service today. Most of our training these days focuses on fire prevention, fire suppression, and emergency medical services. Most departments do not consider technical rescue training beyond confined space awareness. It’s not neglect. The reason is that this is a very low-frequency occurrence and we would rather spend our valuable training hours and dollars on instruction for incidents that occur much more frequently.
Stop and reflect on your own fire service training up until now. Of your total training time, how many hours have you invested in technical rescue? If yours is like most departments, it is probably very few. If you do have some technical training, how many hours annually do you spend on drilling to hone and perfect these skills? In many communities, it’s not many. How can your department ensure it is trained to safely respond to and mitigate a technical rescue incident?
What Is a Technical Rescue Incident?
Technical rescue incidents have some common and specific hazards. The most common types of incidents involve confined space, building collapses, trench/excavation collapses, and high-/low-angle rope rescues. Since it is required firefighter 1 training in many states, let’s start with confined space.
A confined space has limited access or egress, is not made for normal day-to-day human habitation, and is subject to oxygen deficiency or engulfment of liquids and solids. We have all seen examples of tanks and in-ground concrete vaults and are aware of the dangers they present. Your department should have a policy on how to safely deal with such incidents. We see responders getting injured or worse in confined spaces.
Not all confined spaces are obvious. In the scenario above, is a trench or an excavation a confined space? If you look at all its hazards, yes, it should be considered a confined space. It’s not easy to get in or out of, humans don’t normally occupy it except to work it, you need to monitor the air constantly, and you can be engulfed in dirt/sand/water at any given time.
(2) This rooftop was all that was left of a house after Super Storm Sandy. The weather and the destruction of many structures and the transportation infrastructure complicated the rescue.
What about building collapses? Once the building has collapsed, those voids remaining are usually not easy to get in or out of, the air is probably oxygen deficient, and a secondary collapse can engulf personnel. Considering all of this, the three technical rescue incident types above have potential characteristics of a confined space and almost all confined space rescues feature rope work, too. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has rules and regulations specifically addressing confined space, mainly CFR 29 1910.140.
Equipment and Training
Smaller departments (most departments nationwide and even worldwide) usually don’t have a dedicated technical rescue response team with the proper, documented training and the required equipment. Yes, your department may have a rescue company and your rescue truck has “Heavy Rescue” on its sides. But does it carry all the specialized rescue equipment needed to properly and safely mitigate a technical rescue incident? What about training? You may have pneumatic struts, trench panels (real ones), and all the other things that go with them, but they mean nothing if you don’t have the proper and documented training to use them. Even all the larger cities that have rescue companies with equipment and trained members don’t keep their equipment on the main rescue truck. They have other units or storage pods that carry all the heavy rescue equipment.
What can your department do to prepare members to respond safely to a technical rescue incident? Get training. Start with awareness training above and beyond confined space awareness. Our members must first be able to recognize on arrival that the incident to which they are responding may be beyond their initial capabilities and skills to safely mitigate. The “duty to act” has injured and killed too many members who didn’t recognize the unseen hazards or, worse, ignored them. The public and other agencies have always called the fire department to come and “fix” the problem. When it comes to technical rescue, we need to stop, or at least slow down, our interaction with the incident until we can recognize and work with or around the hazards. We learned this years ago with hazmat; now, we need to learn it with technical rescue.
Where do you get this technical rescue awareness training? You can call on surrounding departments that already have technical response teams to train your members to the technical rescue awareness level; if they cannot do it, maybe they can direct you to a source that can help you. Check with local fire academies to see what programs and classes are available. Almost every state in the United States and most foreign countries have an urban search and rescue team. Some are Federal Emergency Management Agency teams and can help provide the training or direct you to the right resources. Ensure that the training you receive is proper, up to date, and properly documented.
First Due: What Can We Do Now?
As already mentioned, you must train and drill to be able to recognize a technical rescue incident and identify its hazards. The next most important action is to deny access into the site, including to members of your department. As in the scenario above, you will have a myriad of problems: coworkers trying to help one of their own, the backhoe’s presence (a major concern), and your members’ involvement. This alone will be a monumental task as the coworkers have only one thing on their mind, and that is to help their coworker. This is usually the hardest task in a confined space incident, as most times the deficiency of oxygen is not evident; everything looks just fine. Cordon off the area.
Monitor the area in general (explosive gases/low oxygen) and then the area of entrapment. Do this without endangering your members.
With respect to the trench scenario, avoid the sides of the trench, and approach only from the ends. If available, use plywood panels or a ladder off the engine to distribute your weight. Limit the approach to only one member. Lock-out/tag-out is also high on the list of things you can do; that includes shutting down any running equipment (such as a backhoe) with the possible exception of the pumps dewatering the hole.
It is important that you bring to the scene the resources needed to control and mitigate the incident. If your department has technical rescue capabilities, activate them. If not, notify your mutual-aid partners as soon as possible. For scene control, request additional police.
Gathering correct and accurate information is a priority. You need to know how the accident occurred, how many potential victims there are, and their last known locations. Also gather information on any hazardous materials involved. Find out if any “responsible parties” are on site who know what was going on prior to the accident. Use your cell phone to take as many photos of the incident as possible, in particular the area of entrapment. They will be invaluable to the incoming mutual-aid rescue units in helping them assess the situation. Also consult Internet sites that can give you an accurate satellite view of the incident. This is most important with a building collapse, but it can be helpful also in directing the approach and staging of resources. If your department or the mutual-aid companies have a tower ladder, place it overhead to aid you in observing the scene and locating victims.
(3) Rescuing and removing victims from high areas require proper training and specialized equipment.
How Far Can We Go with Training?
This is difficult to answer because there are many variables involved. If you want to introduce or enhance your technical rescue capabilities, it is a long and involved journey. The training will involve hundreds of hours followed by almost as many hours of continued drilling to stay effective and safe. Many of the skills involved in technical rescue deteriorate without continual practice. The first question I ask of new students is, “How many knots do you really remember from Firefighter 1 training?” For most, it is not many.
What equipment do you need? Although many of the tools are already on ladders, squads, and rescues, you will need also a long list of specialized tools. You can fill several large rescue trucks with these tools, most of which are specialized for a specific job. To become fully equipped to be capable to respond to all technical rescue incidents, you are looking at the purchase of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment—and more to maintain it. Also, many tools such as ropes, webbing, and harnesses have limited shelf lives and must be replaced in accordance with National Fire Protection Association recommendations.
Consider also that if you don’t keep your technical rescue team members interested, the team may vanish through attrition. Technical rescue is a high-risk/low-frequency occurrence. Most members respond to only a few technical rescue incidents during their career. You will need to keep the training and drills as realistic as possible and keep the members safe during that training. Creating and maintaining these training sites will also require significant funding.
Funding
Now you have to persuade the people who provide the funding. Since these incidents seldomly occur, you must convince them that the service is needed. A good way to do this is to do a technical rescue size-up of your response area. Look for all of the potential “incident” sites in your response area and document this information with facts and photographs. Develop a good presentation to plead your case. In putting this report together, you will also get to know the industries in your response area and the people who run them. All these industries are also subject to the OSHA regulations mentioned above. They must regularly prove that they have the resources to protect and rescue their workers. You and the equipment you can provide can help in this area. If you explain it well enough, they may be willing to help fund your efforts.
Creating your own technical rescue response team is time-consuming and expensive. Another option is to organize shared services with surrounding departments. Many countywide teams throughout the country consist of small teams from several agencies and also smaller full-service technical rescue teams. Although the advantages are great, there are potential pitfalls. One is that if a department has a substantial fire response, it may lose its rescue capabilities. But this also holds true in a small department.
ART BLOOMER is a 30-year veteran of the fire service and a captain with the Kearny (NJ) Fire Department. He is a rescue specialist on NJ-TF1. Bloomer teaches truck operations, rapid intervention, and special operations at the Ocean County (NJ) Fire Academy and is a lead instructor with OnScene Training Associates.
