Cave Diving Stretcher Rescue....

[Yopie]

An exercise of rescue on cave diving was held on April 13, 2008 in France.

1400 m travelled in a sump with a stretcher cave diving.

Teams are relayed to advance the stretcher.

Two divers remained throughout the course with the stretcher was in rebreather.

This stretcher will be soon equipped with rebreather.

Here are two film, the first is the television news shows divers with rebreather.

The second, shown in greater detail the stretcher.

http://www.youtube.com/v/qM4Uth_7W6Q&hl=en

http://www.youtube.com/v/tTRYn1w8nnM&hl=en

Spéléo Secours Français : Accueil







Sorry for my english.....

[Scubastud16]

I'll check the vids out later, but those pictures are pretty awesome!

[FW]

Thank you Yopie, that was an excelent exercise. I have been concerned that someone may need that type of rescue in a US sump.

[FW]

I just watched the videos. I wonder how this exercise would have gone in a cave with silt on the floor?

[Cindy]

I have a full face mask now. We should play with it. I think a orange ems stretcher would work. Cindy

[FW]

I have a full face mask now. We should play with it. I think a orange ems stretcher would work. Cindy

I couldn't help but notice his hands were not tied down, and there was a backup reg handy

[JE]

**This.........is serious business-!! & a welcomed intuition to the cave diving community-! Finally some reality cks on the possibility of this actually happening. I like it-!

je

[Webmaster]

Wow, great visibility there. Looks like a specially rigged up backboard he's on? It's definitely balanced well. That's a brave guy in the litter, it's a pretty helpless feeling volunteering to be the patient above water much less under water. Is that a gas switching block laying across his knees?

Yeah I've thought for a while we should plan some exercises. How well does your mask fit different size faces Cindy? I had wondered if a FFM would work best or if a helmet would be in order.

You'll have the possible concerns of fitting someone you don't know, keeping it on and unflooded on a potentially unconcious patient during transport, and still provide medical access to the airway.

Then there's also the possible concern of having to provide exposure protection. You might have to extract someone that got flooded in vs a diver. I had envisioned something like a large sleeping bag constructed like a drysuit with generic arms and attached mittens and only a zip-seal neck seal. That way with a few different size neck seals you could fit the same device to a number of different size folks.

It would probably be worthwhile to try both with non-rigid stretcher like a Sked and OSS setup, and a Ferno or something. You would want to have your weighting placement and dive related rigging for everything figured out before hand. You'd want to be able to put it on and take it off fairly quickly as you move in or out of the water I think.

Marbry

[Gary]

We used to run accident drills in the Navy for injured/passed out persons in a smoke fill compartment on the submarine. It was always a big mess with dozens of people with masks covered so they can't see running everywhere plugging into air hose connections and daisy chaining connections from one person to the next.

The poor victims playing injured someone had to find them in the dark and put a mask on them.

In addition to putting out the simulated fire and generally taking care of general emergency proceedures. All too often someone would have to move and a several people were plugged into them and no one can hear/see much of anything so they'd unplug and suddenly there are a number of people with no air scrambling to find the nearest empty plug connection (which are few and far between located in the memorized locations).

And of course when a "victim" gets unplugged they aren't supposed to be able to do anything and no one can really see what is going on. It always looked bad in drill review when someone unplugs an injured victim and they "die" suffocating in thier air mask.


Bad vis evacuating a injured diver on a stretcher would probably be a lot like that. Good thing to be thinking about and practising but bad vis etc is probably a whole other level. Something to do once they've got the basics down solid under ideal conditions. It is underwater so they could actually kill someone just practising.

[metaldector]

What is the rectangular box between the divers doubles? Anyone know?