Beaver Lane Fire & Rescue Technical Rescue Certified Firefighter Nick Griffin moderates Part 2 of Fire Spotlight’s Heavy Lifting and Stabilization Training series. Griffin describes this recent pit scenario — a bobtail semi truck rolled on top of a car. Crews learned how to perform a control roll using Paratech Fire & Rescue Equipment HydraFusion Struts in conjunction with a grip hoist to reposition the truck so the lower vehicle could be moved away. Training at Secrest Wrecker Service. (Check back next Tuesday more in this training series.)
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:
My name’s Nick Griffin. Uh, I’ve been here at Beaver Lane for right at seven years. Um, current rank is firefighter also TR certified in EMT.
Yesterday. We had one of our two yearly. Heavy lift classes with Secrest Wrecker local wrecker company lets us come to their yard and train. More or less my role was, I don’t know if you’d call me a moderator or facilitator.
I was over one of the pits involving a semi, a bobtail semi truck rolled over on a car and was going with, going through motions with the students to get the truck off the car, far enough to so we could extricate the patients in the car beneath them.
One of the easiest things we’ve found to do in all four scenarios, was a the type of control role controlled, lower.
The fastest simplest one was you use our Paratech hydrofusions in corporation with a grip hoist to pull the truck back, to get the weight off the car. So we could facilitate moving the lower vehicle away from the truck to make our extrication easier.
We’d had a team rig ready to move the car away if we had a recovery, uh, operator there. They could have moved the car, but if not, would’ve moved the car away from the hazard zone and then we could’ve just extricated like a normal four wheel extrication.
Biggest thing is make sure we get a plan, make sure everybody understands the plan. And we roll with that plan.
It’s important to have plans A through Z. We start with the fastest one we think of work, get everybody on that plan. The minute we see that plan, it’s not going to work. We transition into the next plan. So forth.
We’re looking here at our Paratech struts. Right now they’re the heaviest stress on the market.
“When you need length and strength, you need to go to the Paratechs.”
INSTRUCTOR TIPS
When you start dealing with heavier weights, bigger impaction vehicles, is probably what you need to look at. We know that in our training, if we roll up right now on a larger vehicle, we know not to use our other struts. The other struts do fine in their scope of practice, but when you need length and strength, you have to go, you need to go to the Paratechs.
Some of our struts are rated anywhere from 80,000 down to about 20,000 pounds in their safety rating. All that is a John erector set. Once you buy one system, you just keep adding to it until you’re satisfied. Multiple pieces and parts go together to do the job. And it’s important for the habit of training to know which pieces go where on what you’re trying to do, goes back to having that strong team lead. When you pull up on a rescue scene, they need to know what they want. They need to be able to tell the people what they need to do to facilitate that for the ones that’s not as comfortable or familiar with it.
Pull it back into it. If we were lifting yes. We’d want be in the corners, but because we’re both on this side, we’re gonna have to watch it, we might have to lower one after slowin’ up.
It’s three people orchestrating this right here. So everybody’s gotta be in time because the grip force has to keep enough tension to keep the stead in the strut, strut can’t out run it.
Remember just two fingers on that needle valve, because that’s all it takes and just very gently let it creep down.
“Load the grip hoist a little heavy, and then just let it creep down so you can watch and see how those hydrofusions are moving.”
INSTRUCTOR TIPS
Essentially, what you really want it to do is, you actually want to load the grip hoist a little heavy, and then just let it creep down so you can watch and see how those hydrofusions are moving.
Start cracking your valve just a little bit. Let me know if I’m going too fast Darin.
Let all that sit over there. We’ll drag this car out. Maybe not as far as more rescue teams, but we would move ourselves out of the collapse zone, danger zone whatever you want to call it, get all this stuff out of our way. And we’d go to work on his car like a regular four wheel rest and wreck that everybody in the world knows how to cut up. Right?
Bobtail truck and trailer. All you got to worry about is the front. The back ain’t gonna do nothing. Whatever the front does. That’s what the backs going to do too. Now, if it had a trailer hooked up, we’d have to do a whole lot more. And that right there, because naturally more weights in the box most of the time, even if the trailers back there by it’s self, figure that van weighs, somewhere about 17,000 pounds, maybe, maybe a little bit less than that, but anywhere from 12 to 17,000, depending on how it’s constructed. It’s going to be trying to pull everything over. If it’s already down.
Well, you know, we didn’t, we didn’t lift that much. Even if a box was on it, you would get quite a bit of twist, you could still push that part and not have to worry to pull the car out.
All in consideration would be if that load was pulling down on it cause it’s going to try to twist that…
If it had more to go, if the truck, you know, then you got quite a bit more, but if it’s layin flat, and this is still twisted. You could probably move it three or four inches that way to pull the car.
“That (truck) has a high carbon steel frame. It’s made to twist and turn, or else if it didn’t it would break. If you got enough anchor points, you can get a lot more twist out of that frame on that truck then you realize.”
INSTRUCTOR TIPS
That’s the difference. A lot of people get wrapped up about truck frames. One thing you got to remember is, that’s a high carbon steel frame. It’s made to twist and turn, or else if it didn’t it would break. A lot of them do break even, even manufactured the way they are, but you can get a lot… If you got enough anchor points, you can get a lot more twist out of that frame on that truck then you really realize.