snaggletooth,
thanks for informations. But i'm a little bit surprised that a professionial rescue team doesn't wear a personal harness, especially a MRT and use a strope?!?!
I've made a lot of mountain rescues along europe, without UK
, but never seen a MRT without personal harness. They need the harness not only to hoist up, but self protecting is really important in mountainous area. The "NATO strop" is anything but safe! In the most european countrys you lost you insurance cover immediately if you use such systems. Have seen not long ago a video from the german AF made august 2002. A patient fell out of such a strop and
died. Worldwide rotorheads have a wide experience with such extractions and missions. Germany, Austria and Switzerland alone have made in 2003 more than 3000 civil real-mission short haul or hoist extractions. I couldn't believe it, that we have countries in europe using an extraction system from the first days of the chopper time! It's allways possible to have a problem on a real rescue missions like the accident flight. Unfortunately the civ flight operators are much more up to time and missions than the gov flights. Such a personal harness costs round about 80-100€ and you have a black-out safe system.
PATIENT FELL FROM RESCUE STROP, GERMANY: While hoisting an unconscious
woman with a strop (horse collar), the patient fell through the collar. She was killed in
the fall. The German military doesn’t normally perform rescue operations, since there
are numerous civilian rescue helicopters available. However this incident involved a
large emergency response to a flood situation. This type of patient personnel carrying
device is used in a number of operations, and it requires the person to have the strength
to not allow their shoulders to slump through the collar. It is preferable to use a threepoint
diaper arrangement for uninjured patients.
Interested parties should check the IKAR informations like:
2002_Air-Rescue_report.pdf or
2003_Air-Rescue_Report.pdf