Watched San Andreas, which starts with a crazy ass rescue of a gal hanging in a car on the side of a cliff. The rescuers are Fire Department, in a helicopter, and its nuts.
Which got me thinking: when/how do,rescuers say…sorry, you’re screwed? And HOW, ifmthey are in communication with the person needing rescue? How do you tell someone they are too doomed?
Or are firefighters/rescuers sort of pledgd to try, even if its almost a sure thing they will die? Are they sworn to lay down their lives in futile attempts?
And if one of the rescuers ends up needing rescue themselves, do they go to the back of the line, no matter how injured they are or dire their situation, is it always civilians first?
From everything I’ve heard of, and from my training as a medic in the Army, no, rescuers don’t attempt a rescue if the odds of success are too low.
It’s not to say that it’s a safe job, but they won’t try something if it’s too risky. Medics aren’t supposed to step out of cover into a street getting shot to pieces by the enemy (you try to suppress the enemy first, or there’s this harness you can throw if the casualty is still conscious), firefighters won’t try entering fast food restaurant kitchens in Houston (they tend to go up like movie pyrotechnics from the grease fire flashing over), and you’re not going to risk a 15 million dollar helicopter in a cliffside rescue that is probably going to result in a chopper crash.
As for rescuers rescuing each other, they get to be the front of the line. Obviously. It’s your buddies you are rescuing.
So, in the hypothetical situation of someone hanging off an unstable cliff that is about to collapse, what the rescuers would do is say “hang on, we’re getting equipment, stay calm, we’ll get you out of this” and so on. If, an hour later when they have the equipment needed to actually rescue someone from a cliff face where the cliff itself is unstable and about to collapse, and if the victims are actually still alive, then they’ll rescue em. If they are dead, well, at least it was only the victims that were hanging off the cliff in the start of this situation, and not the victims + first responders.
Not every risk can be predicted. No one thought the World Trade center towers were about to collapse - that is not the normal outcome of a fire in a steel building. If they had known about the impending collapse, about 200 first responders wouldn’t have even entered the building.
The Coast Guard’s unofficial motto is “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back.” After some recent losses they have throttled back on that attitude a bit.
Two years ago, a sinkhole opened up in central Florida, swallowing up a house along with a man inside who was asleep in his bed. Apparently they just presumed he was dead, and made no attempt to rescue him, or recover his remains.
Absolutely, one of the arguments against charging for rescue is the potential for pressure, or liability to press on in an unsafe situation.
I just got done with a wilderness medicine conference, and ‘first, make sure the scene is safe,’ is still the standard of care for volunteers and professionals.
OTOH, I was at a trauma conference a couple years ago where a speaker recounted the story of staying with a kid trapped in a partially collapsed car on the on the Bay bridge after the '89 quake, for hours, with Caltrans urging them to get the fuck out of there. Gnarly story, I won’t recount the details here, but probably a match for anything you’d see in a movie.
As stated scene safety is top priority on all calls. after deployment there can be an order to pull back, out or whatever if conditions change (Safety officer determines structure could collapse for whatever reason). but Rescue Johnny is emotionally bonded with the trapped victim and refuses to leave. Johnny has determined that he would not be able to live with leaving this trapped , lets say child and now IC has a whole new incident. If Johnny safely rescues the child Johnny may his job as a deterrent but Johnny can live with that much easier than abandoning the child and if he looses his life continuing, o well, we all go eventually.
Ok, on a first hand account;
25<> years ago as the chief on a mutual aid fire rescue call there is a dog 100 ft down a 150 ft bank on a Iron Ore Pit wall. The dog is on a short shelf running along the bank. Several young boys had gathered all the ropes they could find and were planning to attempt a rescue and parent were alerted, then the local FD and then My FD as we had a team trained in low angle rescue. This however was a high angle scene at 80-85 deg. There is no other rescue team but us.
Special considerations here was, 1 frost was just coming out and ice had many boulders on it from the pit walls. 2., there were many visible boulders throughout the rescue area. The rescue scene was ruled unsafe.
My 1st suggestion was to get a shooter and put the dog down. That was not accepted by family and my explanation that I could not put one of my firefighters in harms way for a dog.
I had several firefighters that volunteered to make an attempt. Now I am in charge and cannot allow this so I then determined (because I love a good Dog as much as the next guy) that I am the one going down the rope.
I of course had all the training Certs and also did State Training through the Technical Colleges back then am the highest trained in High and Low Angle.
Well the time on Line that day seemed like Hours, watching every boulder and planning my action if one should come loose and keeping my 5/8" Static Kernmantle away from all rocks as best I could.
I finally reached the shelf the dog was on and my concern over how we are going to get along lasted less than 2 sec. as the dog was certainly happy to see me.
I rapidly attached the dog to my repel seat with a loop of tubular webbing using a double larks foot around the chest just behind the front legs and signaled to be hoisted out. My top crew had positioned the rescue truck far enough back from the edge to make this a one shot hoist with the 10,000lbs winch.
My hasty attachment of the dog didn’t go as planned because the dog got turned around almost immediate and was coming up backward, but the hitch looked stable even though a double larks foot should have resulted in a very loose attachment.
Watching every boulder and knowing I cant move like before because of dog on my harness I could only feel reassured that this was my job and nobody else’s. minute’s
latter the top of wall was in sight and dog still behind and the faces of my crew were a wonderful sight. I was helped over and then the Black Lab and we both laid there together exhausted from the ordeal.
Just this spring during one of my Permit to carry classes I had the mother of one of the young boys in class and she again thanked me for what we did that day and I asked her if she remembered my suggestion of putting the dog down over the use of my team and she had and still was grateful.
I did get heat from the chief and council as I should have pulled out but sometimes we just do what needs to be done.
Second-hand account from a reputable source (discussion at a closed safety workshop).
After the Christchurch earthquake in 2010 there were a number of partially-collapsed or otherwise damaged structures with trapped victims. The rescue teams had to be accompanied by civil engineers who could give a decision on whether it was safe to attempt immediate rescue (presumably in some cases rescue could be attempted after some support was added, but at a risk of delaying medical assistance). A failed attempt could not only add to the casualties, but take skilled rescuers out of action when there were other people they could help.
In a couple of “no-go” cases, volunteer civilian rescuers went in anyway, but my understanding is that the official teams were in a sense morally obliged to not volunteer to put themselves in extreme danger.
IIRC several times during rescue efforts after the 1997 Thredbo Landslide they pulled search teams off the rubble when geologists and engineers warned that it was becoming unstable.
I used to have some ‘unofficial’ training manuals put together by local SES units given to me by friends who were part of them and the first rule was : Don’t become a casualty.
We live on a bend of a road with a 40 mph speed limit, but many come around the bend doing way over the limit. A few years ago a woman lost control and crashed into a power pole. The top broke off and fell onto her car, covering it in power lines.
The first responders hung way back and waited for a full 45 minutes until the power company showed up and gave an all-clear that the power was definitely shut down before they got her out, put her on a stretcher and took her away.
“Don’t be a victim.” I think that is the first advice given in most medic and rescue classes.
Way back when I took first took water rescue, the adage was put more bluntly- “Better one than two.”
When I was taking Advanced Life Saving classes back in college, they pointed out that it’s better for one person to drown than two. If you go out and try to save somebody who proceeds to freak right the fuck out and climb all over you, kick free and swim away, and keep your distance until they stop thrashing around. If that happens because they’re drowning, they’ll probably be a lot easier to haul to shore.
We spent a lot more time practicing how to escape from people than on how to grab them.
I remember reading an account by a guy who was in charge of divers trying to rescue a child who had gone through ice. His job was to pull the guys out before they got hypothermia, it wasn’t long, five minutes? They weren’t able to find the child but all the would be rescuers survived. The man in charge said in some ways his was the hardest job that day.