BY TOM SITZ
Probably one of the most undercarried and underutilized piece of personal protective equipment in the fire service today is the personal rope. It can be carried in your turnout gear pocket and costs about $40, depending on what accessories you add to it. Your personal rope can assist you in self-rescue, firefighter rescue, truck company functions, and engine company functions. This article contains a small sampling of the types of operations in which a personal rope will increase your efficiency and effectiveness.
In training with different ropes and diameters, my department has found that 8-mm static kernmantle rope anywhere from 25 to 40 feet in length best fits our needs. Under 8 mm, we had a hard time holding onto it; over 8 mm, it was difficult to carry in our pockets comfortably. The rope should be packed in a rope bag with both carabiners exposed. Packing your rope in a bag will help protect it, aid in deploying it, and help keep it knot free. Keeping both carabiners outside the bag allows you to clip the rope onto yourself and your means of egress or anchor point at the same time without having to completely deploy the rope to expose the other carabiner.
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Following are a couple of examples of how your personal rope can make your life easier; get you out of trouble; and, most importantly, keep you out of trouble (photo 1).
PERSONAL SAFETY/SELF RESCUE
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• Self-rescue rappel. The last step before dropping out of a window should be a self-rescue rappel maneuver using your personal rope tied to an object in the room-a hand tool set in the window or a hand tool set in the floor, walls studs, or other substantial object in the room. This technique is extremely dangerous and proficiency in it requires extensive training. Always use a safety line secured to the firefighter performing the maneuver during training. Certainly, this should be your last choice for removing yourself from the situation, but if you are properly trained in it and the only other option at this point involves gravity and a sudden stop, it is a viable alternative (photo 2).
• Extending your search. You are searching with your partner when the floor space or aisleway suddenly opens up and you can no longer effectively reach out and search the middle of the room while your partner stays on the wall. You can take out your personal rope and secure one carabiner onto your partner while he stays on the wall (oriented) and secure the other carabiner onto your SCBA or bunker gear (only if your gear has the appropriate D-ring or clip built into it). Once you are tied in, you can effectively search 25 to 40 feet from your partner, sweeping the middle of the room. Remember, you are using this technique because a space or an aisleway has opened up so that you cannot effectively search and stay on the oriented wall.
If you are the firefighter going out to search the opening and your rope gets caught on something, you must go back to identify the obstacle and clear it. You do not have a choice; your forward progress is stopped. This can be a good thing: Your rope may be caught on a dresser; a bed; a crib; or, if you are dragging the rope across the floor space, a victim. You can also clip onto your attack line and extend your search using the attack line as your anchor point.
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This tactic can become extremely important when operating inside a commercial building. When stretching into a commercial building fire, the attack line is your orientation; you are not working off a wall. If you cannot see, you should NEVER leave the line in these types of occupancies without tying onto the line of another firefighter. More than once, a firefighter has gotten himself in trouble by leaving the line to check on something he thought was only a couple of feet away, only to crawl past the line or away from the line when attempting to return (photo 3).
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• Maintaining your orientation. You are operating at a fire where conditions are not lightening up as you would expect or your experience tells you something just isn’t right. As you make entry, you clip one end of your rope onto your entry point and the other end onto your SCBA or bunker gear and begin your operations. If you are making entry through a bay door and the door track has a notch in it to receive the latch from a locking mechanism, you should clip your carabiner through it. In doing so, you just created a secondary blocking device to be used with your primary blocking device to keep the door from completely closing. If conditions suddenly become severe or an emergency evacuation is ordered, you can pull your rope tight, and it will give you the most direct path to your exit. You have to use extreme caution if you traverse floor space that you have not already covered. You need to be looking for holes in the floor, elevator shafts, and stairwells.
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You can also clip onto the tip of the ladder when performing vent-enter-search operations if you feel the conditions warrant it and you are concerned about your ability to quickly locate your ladder (photos 4-6).
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• Tie off while operating on a roof. For roof operations in icy or limited-visibility conditions, you could tie yourself off to a substantial object near the area in which you are operating.
FIREFIGHTER RESCUE
You’re operating with your partner when he becomes trapped or is unable to extricate himself from an environment because he has become unresponsive or disoriented. With your personal rope immediately available, you can start to set up a rescue operation while you wait for help to arrive.
• Removing a firefighter from a hole in the floor. Your partner falls into a basement and is uninjured; other means of egress from the basement are unknown at this point. If he carries webbing, he can place himself in a self-rescue harness while you are announcing the Mayday. After he places himself in the harness, you can lower your two carabiners and he can clip them into the harness, leaving two ropes up at the top that can be used to pull him out of the hole. If everyone on your shift carries rope and you are operating in a team of three or four, another set of carabiners should be lowered and clipped into the harness, leaving four ropes that can be used to haul him out.
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While this is going on, other rescue attempts should be in progress. Someone should be getting a ladder to drop into the hole, or maybe Command knows of an exterior door to the basement. An attack line already in place could also be used to remove the firefighter. Dropping a ladder into the hole or using another means of egress is certainly a better option than using your rope to pull a conscious firefighter through a hole in the floor. But your rope can be deployed immediately and the rope can be disconnected just as fast if the ladder shows up before the firefighter is out of the hole. If you train in the proper lifting methods-legs instead of arms for lifting-and wear full personal protective equipment, three or four firefighters should be able to extricate a conscious firefighter out of a residential basement in three to four minutes (photo 7).
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• Removing an unresponsive firefighter from a window. You can double up two personal ropes in conjunction with a ground ladder already in place to pick up and lower a firefighter from a second-floor window. Loop your rope over a ladder rung and connect onto the downed firefighter’s harness, or convert his SCBA into one. Several firefighters on the ground can haul him out of the window and lower him safely to the ground (photos 8, 9).
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• Removing a firefighter from a peaked roof. In this operation, if one member of a two-person roof team goes down, the other member can use his personal rope and a roof ladder as a anchor point to lower the firefighter. Only one other firefighter is needed, on the ground, to make sure the firefighter slides smoothly down the roof and does not get caught on the edge of the roof or a gutter1 (photo 10).
TRUCK COMPANY OPERATIONS
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Some of these operations are very basic, but if you do not carry rope with you, you cannot perform them or you are wasting time and energy going back to the truck.
• Raise/lower equipment. Most firefighting operations in America occur in a one- to three-story private dwelling. A 40-foot rope should cover the majority of the structures in which you probably will operate.
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• Vent windows from a flat roof. Clip your halligan onto your personal rope and swing the halligan into the windows. It is extremely important to clean and thoroughly inspect your rope after every use. If I were to use my rope to assist in taking windows, I would double/triple check it for damage and take it out of service at the slightest sign of wear (photo 11).
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• Secure ladder tip/base. If you have to operate away from the ladder during windy conditions and no one is available to stay at the ladder and hold it, you should consider tying the tip of the ladder to an object on the roof. If you’re the last one up the ladder and it is icy or the ladder needs to be set at a steep angle because of wires or another obstruction, you could tie off the base to prevent it from kicking out. Obviously, the ladder should always be heeled if the personnel are available, but this is not always the case, especially in the initial critical minutes (photo 12).
ENGINE COMPANY OPERATIONS
The rope is very useful for stairwell stretches, exterior stretches, and securing hoselines to ladders or stair rails.
These are just a few of the types of operations for which you could use your personal rope. The uses for your personal rope are limited only by the user’s imagination, training, and experience. It is another tool for your toolbox (head) that is very easy to carry with you everywhere you go. This becomes even more important with today’s limited staffing. Remember, this is not life safety rope; you are not going to lower someone off a roof or over a cliff with it. You cannot shock load this rope and expect a favorable outcome. Hopefully, you will use your rope only to haul equipment and increase the safety of the search team in questionable conditions. However, if you properly package and maintain your rope and you are faced with an extreme situation, having your rope as an option can increase your chances for a positive outcome.
Whether it is used to keep you out of trouble (most important), get you out of trouble, or get another firefighter out of a trouble, it is well worth your or your department’s small monetary investment. Its versatility and the fact that it can be deployed instantly, because it is always in your gear, make it an invaluable asset to your firefighting arsenal. ■
Endnote
1. For more information on this technique, see “Rapid Removal of an Unresponsive Firefighter from a Peaked Roof,” Tom Sitz, Fire Engineering, March 2003.
■ TOM SITZ is a 19-year veteran of the Painesville Township (OH) Fire Department, where he is a lieutenant.
