Treg
Sorry for the late reply, but here goes:
1. Of the occasions you have undertaken single strop rescues, how many of these did the rescuer attached to the winch hook elect to wear a single strop in preference to a harness?
The rescuer would never opt to wear a strop. You have to be able to manouvre, even hang upside down at times, a strop would never allow that.
2. If it were possible to find those people you have rescued in a single strop over the years and explain to them the benefits of two strops (see Crab’s comments) would they, do you think, be happy with just a single strop if ever winched over land again?
I would never try and explain to a layman and give him the choice of how they are lifted. We have enough difficulty explaining what we do to experienced aircrew.
We use many different techniques depending on the siituation, giving the uninformed survivor a vote only puts both of your lives at risk.
3. In the context of in-depth-barrier-defence and risk management, is use of a single strop appropriate?
We were not there, who are we to judge what was apropriate.
I regret that there are a number of armchair amateurs who make comment on these threads, no insult intended. There are also a lot of experienced professionals who have grown up with different systems that work for them. We professionals have different opinions but the systems all work in the right circumstances; yes there are deaths but we do our best to avoid these by training hard and perfecting our skills. We also look at other peoples problems and try to learn from them.
I suggest that we close down this thread because it is not leading anywhere. We could make various suppositions and theories but if the guy had not broken his ankle would the rescue have been necessary.
The guys on the spot had to deal with a problem and did so to the best of their ability, the outcome was unfortunate. Learn from it and let it go.
Oh and to get the story straight, I learnt a lot from Crab apart from how to ride a motorbike up steps.
Heads Down, look out for the flack.