Rescue statements for tallescopes

[mikienorth]

Well I have contested the use of ppe on our scope with our H&S chap and it appears that he has seen the light. Now we shall not be expected to use ppe on the scope, thank god etc.

 

Now thats good news for all concerned.

[DavidLee]

Just a bit of information about Fire & Rescue Service cover...

 

Perchance happened to bump into a fireman friend in the pub this lunchtime who used to be one of the main flymen in our local theatre group - in the days when Malvern Festival Theatre was a hemp house and we could still rig all our own flying.

 

I mentioned this thread in conversation and it turns out that he is currently a senior member of the Hereford and Worcester Brigade's "Line Rescue Team". He says that there would be no problem at all in carrying out a rescue from the top of a Tallescope and that they could either drop a line from the grid or else use the Tallie itself.

 

Apparently they can rescue in any situation where they can get a fixing either above or below the structure. In the case of a Tallie they would first secure it to the deck before rigging their gear to carry out the rescue.

 

Nick told me that the team will turn out to any shout involving a rescue from height, even where the rescue is intended to be carried out using ladders, since their specialist stretcher techniques frequently turn out to be required.

 

They've recently had to rescue a heart attack casualty from the bell tower of Hereford Cathedral - by lowering through the bell hole under the ringing chamber and a couple of weeks ago had to stretcher a 30 stone corpse out of an upper window of some Hereford flats after it had proved impossible to get it through the doors! So training is quite wide ranging!

 

Apparently all brigades should have Line Rescue Teams fully trained to cope with a Tallescope rescue situation.

 

Encouraging news!

 

Cheers

 

David

[SlackerWill]

Apparently all brigades should have Line Rescue Teams fully trained to cope with a Tallescope rescue situation.

 

Very interesting! I think that just for my own curiosity I shall contact my local brigade.

 

Will

[Guest lightnix]

...Apparently all brigades should have Line Rescue Teams fully trained to cope with a Tallescope rescue situation...

 

Which is all well and good; but if the unthinkable hapens, will you have the time to wait for them? What if they are out fighting a fire??

 

Think: There's a colleague (perhaps even a friend) unconcious at the top of the 'scope, possibly dying. If there's a harness involved, you may have just a few minutes to effect a rescue, before suspension trauma takes its deadly toll; at which point you may as well just put something soft on the floor (so as not to make a mess) and cut them down :(

 

Is your rescue plan really going to be, "Wait for the Fire Brigade to arrive - they'll know what to do."? ;)

 

Perhaps it would be better to have your staff trained and equipped in such methods.

[Ynot]

Sitting well and truly on the fence here, I'd ask where do you draw the line?

 

Do you, as a safety conscious yet considerate human being with understandable concerns for your colleague, advocate effecting a rescue from ANY situation?

What about if there was a colleague in a room with fire blocking your path?

What if there were a collapse in the building and the only route to a trapped work-mate was placing you and maybe others at higher risk to retrieve them?

Or any number of other scenarios...

 

Don't get me wrong - I would likely be one of the first to make EVERY attempt within my power to effect a rescue but you simply cannot plan for every eventuality, and many such plans can place more risk on the would-be rescuer than is already on the casualty.

 

As to whether a stage crew could or should be able to effect a retrieval of a limp body from atop a telle, then that would depend entirely on so many factors.

What caused the collapse of the guy at the top?

Is he/she unconscious, or merely stunned?

Where is the talle? Can it be moved to a place to make a rescue easier?

Are those people who may have been trained in rope rescue under the proposed RA actually on site? Or are the only people there those involved in the rigging in progress?

 

And many, many more options.

 

OK - I'll accept that the brigade may NOT be able to attend for various reasons, or may NOT have the required skills in their team, BUT I suspect that a proper rescue by properly trained professionals is going to be preferable to a botched (though well-meant) attempt by inexperienced hands.

 

My tuppence, anyway.

[Suzette]

Here's a thought to throw into the pot .... collapsed casualty at the top of the 'scope - theatre has a pit lift that moves between the stage level and a much lower pit level.

Raise the pit lift to stage level, move the 'scope with casualty onto the lift, lower the lift until the 'scope basket is level with the stage, lift the casualty out of basket at stage level and administer first aid.

 

Now obviously this only works if the pit lift drops the same (or similar) distance as the height of the 'scope, and it is available for use - i.e. not full of an orchestra and equipment and cables preventing the movement of the lift within a few minutes... BUT it maybe something that SOME theatres may be able to CONSIDER in the event of the rare emergency of a casualty unable to help themselves at the top of the tallescope.

 

(And yes, I know you are not supposed to move the 'scope with people in the basket - but this is an emergency situation only, not general practise!)

[Roderick]

I believe the most important thing to come out of this discussion is for people who regularly use tallescopes to stop for a moment and work out a rescue system, and then train people in that system.

The suggestion Suzette posted is good as was the one that suggested the tallescope could be moved close to a gallery. It doesn't matter what it is, and it will change from venue to venue, but work something out! Just thinking that 'it won't happen' or 'emergency services will fix it' is irresponsible. With that line of thought, why do you have fire extinguishers in the building? Have you ever needed them? Why not call the fire brigade? Same with circuit breakers, safety bonds, fire retardant fabrics, all things we have accepted and use everyday to provide a safer workplace. Just because this is a much more difficult problem to fix doesn't mean it doesn't need a solution.

 

If you use a tallescope in your venue, think about what you can do if someone collapses on top of the 'scope. Then test the theory to make sure it works and if it does, train all staff in how to use it. But do it and implement it before some jobsworth without a clue decides on something totally unrealistic or downright stupid.

 

Just my 2P

[dosxuk]

With that line of thought, why do you have fire extinguishers in the building? Have you ever needed them? Why not call the fire brigade? Same with circuit breakers, safety bonds, fire retardant fabrics, all things we have accepted and use everyday to provide a safer workplace. Just because this is a much more difficult problem to fix doesn't mean it doesn't need a solution.

 

But, each of those precautions are for everyday eventualities, I've seen fires, electrical faults, and non fire proofed fabrics, and heard lots of tales of lanterns getting knocked and falling onto their safteies. I'm yet to hear of anyone ever collapsing at the top of a scope, and from the reactions here, very few other people have ever heard of it before. It's still a risk, but is it a serious enough risk?

[Ynot]

It's still a risk, but is it a serious enough risk?

Precisely the point!!

Risk assessment is just that - an assessment of the overall risk and is calculated by using the likelihood of said risk occurring multiplied by the severity of that risked outcome to the individual/group.

 

In fact to be pedantic, collapsing at the top of a talle is in fact the resultant outcome of a risk, not in fact the risk itself - the risk would be the reason why someone might collapse and therefore what should be mitigated against in the RA. Why might someone collapse? As I see it, either due to health problem (eg heart failure) or by result of some action causing them to lose consciousness.

 

So the RA should therefore perhaps show that the risk of a collapse at height is low, though severity potentially high. The action plan for reducing said risk would be a) not to allow anyone with known health problems work at height (pretty standard anyway) and b) ensure that they are fully trained in WAH safety regs so as to avoid self-harm and c) ensure that everyone else working in the vicinity is also trained to work safely.

 

And because the inherent likelihood of a collapse at height is going to be pretty low (I've yet to see evidence from anyone here that this has ever happened...) then the original course of action to be recommended should the unthinkable happen is precisely what I first posted and will stick by now - call 999 and wait for the professionals to turn out. Yes, they MAY be elsewhere and unable to attend straight off, or possibly not have a fully trained rope team, but that can happen in any emergency situation and is a risk that they take and have to manage.

 

Part of the RA/Action Plan may be, however, to contact the local fire station and check whether they have a rope-trained crew, and if not, outline the concerns of the venue and suggest they might want to invest some training in such based on the risks assessed by the management.

[Roderick]

In fact to be pedantic, collapsing at the top of a talle is in fact the resultant outcome of a risk, not in fact the risk itself - the risk would be the reason why someone might collapse and therefore what should be mitigated against in the RA.

At the risk of nitpicking, but that is actually incorrect - these are two separate risks.

There are many reasons why someone could collapse, probably too many to reasonbly list, but what is under review here is where they collapse, or get themselves into some sort of trouble that would prevent them from climbing down the ladder. With the current requirement of climbing down between every move, a person may well feel too exhausted to safely climb down - OK, extreme but I just wanted to show that there are many reasons why or how someone could get stuck on top of a tally.

 

In terms of medical conditions, that could well be controlled within your organisation but what happens if one of the touring crew needs to go up the tally? Their boss may well be aware that they are diabetic, but are you? We work in an industry that often requires quick last-minute fixes, that mover that requires a manual reset two minutes before doors, that doesn't always allow you to check someone's condition before they climb up.

 

Having said all that, I fully respect Ynot's decision to prefer the Emergency Services to fix the problem if it ever occurs, but I do also believe that contacting the local station to make sure they can actually deliver that rescue should be a must, not a may. You really don't want them to show up and then tell you they don't have the gear or expertise to carry out the required actions. And ask them if they could carry out a 'test' rescue, just to make sure it can be done.

 

As I said before, it is really all about thinking about it and work out a solution. It is very unlikely to happen but due to the high severity if it happens, a suitable solution should be at hand.

[Ike]

...And ask them if they could carry out a 'test' rescue, just to make sure it can be done...

I really don't see this as being practical. In the highly unlikely event of a rescue being necessary there are so many different ways it could pan out I don't see how you'd create a typical test scenario. Added to this you have the risks of carrying out the rescue both from potentially overloading equipment and unorthodox roped access techniques.

 

Surely the requirements for a line rescue team are general roped access skills and an ability to improvise not necessarily a plan of how they can rescue someone from every conceivable situation? If the latter was the case they'd be to busy training to actually rescue anybody.

[Ynot]

In terms of medical conditions, that could well be controlled within your organisation but what happens if one of the touring crew needs to go up the tally? Their boss may well be aware that they are diabetic, but are you? We work in an industry that often requires quick last-minute fixes, that mover that requires a manual reset two minutes before doors, that doesn't always allow you to check someone's condition before they climb up.

You're quite correct.

BUT it's not just the responsibility of the 'home team' to carry out risk assessments - that responsibility belongs to EVERYONE involved - right down to the individual.

In an ideal world there should be generic RA's for the venue, specific RA's for the jobs/tools and then every individual should carry out their own RA before doing anything with any risk attached. ie "I'm about to climb this ladder, is there a risk involved? Is it positioned correctly, are there any external influences present (eg fly bars coming in/out around it), am I feeling fit enough to climb safely.... etc"

 

The individuals in every case HAVE to accept part of that responsibility in all cases, not just blindly assume that someone else has done it for them.

[kerry davies]

http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index.htm and now you can even buy a calendar!

Risk Assessments are written records which are legal documents....not EVERY activity requires a written assessment before it takes place. The word significant comes into it somewhere.

"Sensible risk management is not about:

Creating a totally risk free society OR Generating useless paperwork mountains "

Work at Height should already be covered by an employers RA which should be readily available for everyone to read.

[Roderick]

As this interesting discussion was going a little too far off-topic, I have started a new thread: linky