Technical Rescue Operations

Description

Technical Rescue Operations, Volume II: Common Emergencies is the second in a three-volume series by Larry Collins. Volume II covers responding to, managing, and conducting rescues in the “daily” setting of fire/rescue agencies. This includes the kind of technical rescues that confront firefighters and rescuers on practically a daily basis. This volume also explains how to handle more complex and large-scale rescue operations that challenge responders to apply solid rescue principals for longer periods of time, with the assistance required of additional resources and under more strict command and control because of the scope of the incident, its newsworthiness, crowds of people arriving on the scene, and getting the immediate attention of local or regional elected officials.
Features & Benefits:
Learn from the author’s repeated “once in a career” incidents that are commonplace for busy fire/rescue units such as the L.A. County Fire Department’s USAR task force/USAR Company
Maximize the base of knowledge developed by leading international rescuers and fire/rescue agencies, taught by a current practitioner assigned as an officer of one of the most experienced and battle-hardened fire department rescue units in the nation
Contains “best practices” from fire/rescue agencies from around the world, showing how technical rescues and disasters can be managed better, faster, and safer

Preface
Table of Contents
Introduction
Terrorism
Structure Collapse Search and Rescue Operations
Water Rescue
Mud and Debris Flow Search and Rescue Operations
Helicopter Rescue Operations
Bibliography
Appendices
Index

Every year fire fighters and other rescuers are killed attempting to pull victims from rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, flood channels, rock quarries, tunnels, the ocean, and other bodies of water. The majority of water rescue operations are successful, but there are significant numbers of close calls. The inherent dangers associated with water rescue demand attention to strategy, tactics, training, standard operating guidelines, and other factors related to operational safety. Rescuer safety must be of paramount concern in all cases, because injured, lost, or dead rescuers can help no one.
The history of the fire service is replete with stories of ill-prepared, improperly equipped would be rescuers killed trying to help. Many of these cases have involved fast-moving water or large ocean waves and first responders who entered the water without the appropriate equipment, who weren’t trained for the conditions they faced, or who were simply overwhelmed by the moving water and ended up in the same predicament as the original victim(s).
We’ve all heard that the force of moving water is deceiving; that it can overwhelm even the strongest swimmers and rescuer under the right (or wrong) conditions. This author, a lifelong swimmer assigned to an engine company, once found himself fighting for his own life after jumping into the raging sea during an on-duty rescue in a 1982 storm to rescue a fisherman who was washed off a rocky reef at the base of a 250 foot cliff in 12 to 15 foot waves with nothing but rock and reef along the coast.
The author, who like most firefighters at the time, had no formal training in surf and ocean rescue, was able to make his way to the victim and begin swimming the man back into the surf line. But the situation quickly turned into a life and death struggle to keep the victim and rescuer afloat as they began to be dashed against the rocks, pulled beneath the surface in the venture created by a canyon of submerged rocks, and washed back and forth 25 yards at a time by the storm swells.
After several minutes of struggle, the rescue was ultimately successful. However, more than twenty years later, this author is still left with these strong impressions from the experience: One understands the true worth of air when he is repeatedly forced beneath the surface to the point where “Just one more breath of air” becomes the most important thing in the world, and where he is forced to make a decision whether to hang on to the victim or abandon him to get a breath of air before blacking out. One also understands the true value of a rapid intervention system to provide emergency assistance when things start to go wrong and the rescuer gets into trouble. Fortunately, through youthful determination and luck, this author was able to hang onto the man, and everyone escaped alive, albeit with various levels of hypothermia, cuts and scrapes, and a renewed respect for the power of water.

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