Vehichle extrications

[medictom]

Well everybody I'm going to post a play along thread,to get our minds going!
Ill start it off with a few things on being first at scene and then everybody add on until we have a successful op!!Here goes.............
When you get there you have a hot zone,the hot zone search includes looking for passengers who may have been ejected from the car,or passers by who may have witnessed the entrance point of the vehicle,if it is an ice extraction also look for other holes in the ice where the passengers could have broken through and gotten out.Look for people in the water , especially babies,mother's have a tendency to try to save the children first, and babies do float!Why you ask,because of air trapped in their diapers and clothing.And they have a greater fat to muscle ratio, than adults and this also will help with flotation.
The surface should start off with looking for items that could have ben ejected from the car, and also gas and oil on the water's surface.These things can all help out in plotting a vehichle's location.
If there is any current or wind you have to calculate the estimated depth where the vehicle may be. If it is possible and you have adequate surface support have them calculate the speed of the water in kts..I do this by having a florescent pink ping pong ball and a premesured lenght of rope to put on the river bank that is exactly 100 ft. long..As you know a 1 kt. of current will move an object 100 ft. in 1 minute, so if at the 75 ft, mark on the rope the ball has arrived there in 30 secs. you have a 1.5kt.current.
Our team's next step is to calculate the safest and most effective point of entry for the primary diver.We have a lot of low vis. here, due to the convergence of 2 rivers,hence the Indian word for the city is "muddy water" (Winnipeg), boy they got that one right!!In low vis. situations the primary should be teathered with the tender with direct line access to the 2nd and 90% diver on shore.
The next steps to follow are up to you................................ to keep this op going to completion and everyone on the team is at home safe with their families!!

I started this post as I noticed that this thread has had no new posts on it for over 30 days!Let's all change that!!:14:

Best wishes to all and dive safe!!And to all the PSD's in the MPLS/ST.PAUL area I'm sure all of our prayers are with you!!

Tom

 

[medictom]

And of course I had to vote YES on the first vote.
I started the poll!!!

 

[Gary D.]

From past experiences I don’t recommend looking for a vehicle or any other object where we think the current may have taken it. Start looking where we know it went in. Current can play some funny tricks.

We keep tract of our water flows throughout the year. We try to keep a heads up on where we can or can’t dive at any given time. We don’t try to calculate it when we need to do a dive as it can just be to time consuming.

If you keep an eye on the posted water flows you can get a good accurate idea of what the river(s) are doing at any given time and location.

Not all babies will float. Most will but not all. There are many factors that can keep one from floating so as crews search the surface keep searching the bottom.

Making a quick assessment of entry points is needed. A steep bank can mean a diver and or tender just may have to repel to the waters edge to start the operation. Small steep banks can be better utilized by having Fire tie off some ladders over the side.

Using spray paint is a good way to mark entry points, witness locations, tender points and anything else that needs to be preserved. We have that orange accident marking paint in all of our vehicles.

Next.

Gary D.

 

[medictom]

After you have selected the entrance spotfor the primary you then check the immediate area on the eater surface for traces of contminants such as gas,diesel,oil,radiator fluids, etc.If these are present you are going to hav e to take the following into consideration before going any further:
1) Have the diver's got enough protection from the contaminents?
2) Are the exposure suits you are using adequate for the exposure time to the contaminent (Viking Pro HD-1500, Viking Military, etc.) as even short exposures can permeate certain chemicals through the suit.If in doubt contact the suits company of origin and ask for their current tests on haz-mats with their products. "THIS" should be done well in advance of the operation, a good place to keepa copy for reference is in the SOG/ Divelog you take to scene.Biological contaminents should also be in the details of the permeability.While I'm on bio contaminents, make sure your vaccinations for HEP-A-B .Diptheria,Tetanus, and in some places in the South Yellow Fever, and anti-malarials may have to be used asls,(Chloroquine,Quin Sul-400mg.)Talk with your Dr. about this.
3) Have adequate spots available in case you have to De-Com your diver's.A 6-8 ft. inflatable kid's pool works great,have brushes,detergents,clorine bleach(Javex, Linco),a source of clean water to use for hosing off the diver after scrubbing and before breaking the neck,wrist,helmet seals.If possible have a change
of clothes,or a "jumpsuit" available in case for some reason the suit had a leak or tear and any of the contaminent came into contact with clothing or diver.
4) If there are live vic's in the vehicle approach with caution, remembering they may have only that air bubble keeping them alive,30-70% of the time they will reach for your air supply.Be cautious.
5)Orientation to the vehicle is a must.If it has submerged in water that is deeper than the length of the vehicle there is a very real possibility it has landed
hood down, tires up.This is a very REAL POSSIBILITY of diver entanglement and entrapment.Make sure your bouancy skills are up to snuff!Practice this skill as often as you can in a submerged car in a confined open water space.Some gov/ lakes allow you to do this as long as the shell of the vehicle is cleaned of all contaminents.
6( A stirred up bottom or silt out is a dead give away of an over weighted diver, even though I know a lot of us like to be negative for certain ops. Check your weighting!

Now it's up to you to keep the scenario going.................... I'm sure Gary D. doesn't want to do the whole article.That's why I started it is to get input from Dept's from all over, so come on guys/gals, start typing.............

 

[bridgediver]

I'd have to say "no" for VE in general PSD.

Unless you're on a team that trains/works nearly every day this is about as dangerous as a PSD dive can get. Contamination concerns are are way down the list of hazards to consider. Diver risk of entrapment and death is huge and can occur in a number of ways if not done properly.
Air bubbles are virtually non-existant in a vehicle and the chance of an occupant actually finding it is pretty much zero -- unfortuantely movies and TV shows paint a different picture.

Its much safer to to hook the vehicle and pull it out but even this is not without its hazards. Our team will not actively enter a vehicle, go behind it, under it or down stream of it -- these are all danger zones and not worth the risk IMO
A safe PSD dive ensures direct line access to the diver at all times. A vehicle will complicate this many times over and may require double the personnel you normally use.
Most teams shouldn't even think of doing this stuff

 

[Gary D.]

We are going to be disagreeing a bunch on this one.

I could care less about any contamination a passenger vehicle is going to pollute me with. If it’s a truck with Haz-Mat on board that’s a different story. If the contaminates from a vehicle were so bad every mechanic, including myself would have been extinct a long time ago.

We decon right on the dock or waters edge. We use foam right off the trucks or Fireboat and it will help with dispersing what already on the water.

Finding conscious people in a submerged vehicle is so rare I’d worry about getting hit with a meteor on the dive first. Most are still alive when we get there but I have never seen someone conscious. This is a product of Hollywood.

Where did 30-70% of the time they will reach for your air come from? I’ll guarantee that if it was me in that vehicle and you had air we’d be switching places real fast. Yet another product of Hollywood.

There seems to be no rime or reason to how a vehicle will land. We have areas where multiple vehicles have gone in time after time. Some land upright and some turn turtle. I’ve seen them either way throughout the entire water column. If I had to pay the odds on how they would land I’d say we have a lot more stay upright than turn turtle.

I’m heavy as is almost every other PSD I know. Being heavy makes working with a vehicle or tools much easier. If lighter was better then why don’t Military or Commercial divers get neutral? Getting planted on the bottom or against an object is much easier.

If it is rescue mode do you think a diver hitting the bottom is going to FUBAR the vis.? I think the vehicle we are going after has already done that so who cares if the diver kicks it up.

I know different teams do different thing and have different conditions. But some of what we just covered is right out of the movies. It sells tickets and looks good on paper but in the real world it is much different.

Gary D.

 

[medictom]

The 30-70% of the time the vics. will reach for your air supply came from lecture notes I still had from a course run by LGS on this topic.
T

 

[Gary D.]

The 30-70% of the time the vics. will reach for your air supply came from lecture notes I still had from a course run by LGS on this topic.
T

I'd like to know who has actually found mobile victim(s) in a vehicle where this would be an issue.

When and where was that lecture? We're DRI and I done't recall anything like that. I may have been napping but I don't recall it.

Gary D.

 

[BladesRobinson]

I'd like to know who has actually found mobile victim(s) in a vehicle where this would be an issue.

When and where was that lecture? We're DRI and I don’t recall anything like that. I may have been napping but I don't recall it.

Gary D.

Originally Posted by medictom
The 30-70% of the time the vics. will reach for your air supply came from lecture notes I still had from a course run by LGS on this topic.

Gary,

You were NOT napping during the DRI lecture! There is reason you never heard this during the DRI program and it is because our programs are based on the experiences of real public safety divers who conduct real public safety dives. The lectures and textbooks are the based on the combined experiences of thousands of public safety divers spanning three decades.

My personal experience over 27 years has yielded only ONE conscious, struggling, live victim inside an overturned vehicle that was mostly submerged. (Some of my co-workers on another shift had a single similar experience too).

The important phrase here is the vehicles were "mostly submerged" ... not "completely submerged." The victim my crew rescued lived because he was able to draw air through pursed lips firmly placed against a rusted floor board that was an inch or two above the water level. The vehicle disappeared after midnight and was found at daybreak so this very fortunate individual was able to survive for several hours in his overturned vehicle.

Had the vehicle been completely submerged, he would have drowned in the same fashion as scores of other drivers in our community.

We know that vehicles are NOT airtight. If they were, thousands of people would likely die from hypoxia on long drives. This also explains why vehicles sink when they enter the water and why they are poor substitutes for boats. I do not know of a single incident where a public safety diver has recovered a conscious, struggling, living victim from an "air pocket" in a submerged vehicle (car, truck, bus, motorcycle, etc.).

I am aware of conscious, struggling, living victims being pulled from overturned boats but then again we are ALL aware of the watertight/airtight integrity of boat hulls. I am even aware of a diver who survived an out of air emergency on a wreck dive because of the benefit of an air pocket.

If ANYONE can cite a REAL incident where a public safety diver saved the life of a living, kicking, struggling victim from an air pocket inside a fully submerged vehicle, please pipe up. I would enjoy hearing the story and reading a copy of the incident report.

Blades Robinson

 

[bridgediver]

[/FONT][/COLOR][/I]
We know that vehicles are NOT airtight. If they were, thousands of people would likely die from hypoxia on long drives.

tom - what was the lecture on? That stat (30-70%) sounds more like what the behavoir would be for an OOA diver approaching his buddy. A non-diving drowning victim trapped in a car would probably not be the same.