firefighters—The Weak Link in Belaying
FEATURES
ROPE
Photo by Charles L. Dean
Rescue and life ropes are used by most fire departments when their members have to work from precarious heights. However, the best rescue rope is worthless if firefighters are not trained in the proper methods of arresting an accidental fall.
The use of rope in today’s fire service has expanded considerably from its traditional function of hauling, hoisting, and lowering equipment. While these are still important aspects of rope usage, rope has become a primary and extremely versatile life safety and rescue tool.
Few pieces of equipment in the modern fire department inventory have received as much scientific scrutiny, publicity, or concern as the rope. As a result, today’s rescue personnel can stake their lives and the lives of civilians on high-technology nylon rope capable of holding static loads of 5,500 pounds.
In conjunction with the breaking strength of ropes, concern has abounded over the relative strength of knots and the tensile strength of carabiners and other climbing and rescue hardware. All of these concerns are justified, particularly in the specialized techniques used in high-angle applications. For the most part, however, fire service ropes and their adjunct equipment are used primarily for the life safety of emergency service personnel working at heights. The best made equipment is useless in an accident where firefighters cannot safely stop themselves from falling.
Belaying, a mountaineering term referring to the technique used to arrest falls, is extremely useful for many applications within the fire service. It can provide that extra margin of safety for ventilation operations on steep pitched or ice covered roofs, rescue operations around pits, elevator shafts, and trench cave-ins, as well as the more dramatic high-angle rescue applications. It is a basic fundamental rope technique that should be learned well by all emergency service personnel.
The belay chain is composed of climber (or descender), rope, belayer, and anchor (any substantial object that can support the belay chain). The concerns of equipment strengths and designs are an integral part of the belaying system; but like any chain, the belaying system is only as strong as its weakest link, and generally the weak link is the firefighter belayer. A 5,000-pound test rope is as useless in the hands of the untrained as is a modern 1,250-gpm pumper without water. That weak link in the belaying system must be strengthened and eliminated with proper procedures and hands-on training.
The basics of belaying are often overlooked in fire service training programs. The emphasis on sophisticated and specialized rope techniques such as rappelling, high-angle evacuation, and other rescue systems utilizes most of the available training time due to the complexities of the systems themselves. Therefore, little experience is gained in belaying.
This lack of experience can be seen anywhere that firefighters use a safety or belay line. A typical scenario has a firefighter carefully tied to the end of a rope that is capable of lifting an automobile. The other end of the rope is held by another firefighter in the same manner and position used for hoisting a piece of equipment over the edge of a roof. Many firefighters seem to have two common beliefs about this technique: The first is that the person tied to the one end of the rope is not going to fall; the second is that if he does fall, the firefighter holding the other end of the rope can easily arrest his fall.
The first belief is ludicrous. If the possibility of falling does not exist, why is the firefighter tied to the end of the rope? According to the 1983 death and injury study of the International Association of Fire Fighters, 2.1% of all line-of-duty firefighter deaths were a result of falls. Some of those falls probably could have been avoided if proper belaying techniques were used. That safety line is more than just a mental confidence builder.
The belief that a falling body can easily be held is proven false by simple physics. Based on the formula for impact force at the end of a rope:
where: K = impact force in kilograms
G = body weight in kilograms
f = fall factor length of fall/ rope runout
m = rope module (measurement—different types of rope have different modules)
therefore: a firefighter weighing 200 pounds produces an impact force of over 1,700 pounds. Although all modern rescue ropes can withstand that force, there are few if any firefighters who can stand flat footed and hold an equivalent load in their bare hands.
The specifics of belaying techniques themselves, as well as their relative effectiveness, are many. Each advocate of a particular technique can list as many advantages for that technique as can an opponent list disadvantages: dynamic versus static; shoulder belays versus hip belays; body-dynamic versus mechanical-dynamic belays; etc.
Although the specifics are numerous and subject to personal likes and dislikes, the primary techniques of proper belaying are quite fundamental:
- The belayer must utilize friction to be able to arrest the fall.
- He must be securely anchored to prevent being yanked over the edge.
- He must be prepared for the unexpected.
As long as these general guidelines are adhered to, the belay should be effective.
A basic and generally accepted technique is illustrated in Figure 1. Note that the belayer is seated with a wide stable stance and is attached to an anchor capable of holding the entire force subjected to the belay chain. The belayer must face the direction of pull in the event of a fall. This direction of pull may not correspond to his position before the fall. Rope handling procedures with the appropriate verbal commands are often the most difficult segment of the belay operation. This is due primarily to a lack of training and experience. The main point of the procedure is to never let go of the rope with the brake hand. Murphy’s Law concerning belaying indicates that if the brake hand is released from the rope, the climber will choose that instant to fall. An accepted procedure for rope management during a belay is shown in Figure 2.
The best training method for belaying expertise is hands-on practice. Training can effectively begin at ground level with proper stances, tieins, rope handling procedures, commands, and anchors. A firefighter properly anchored to a piece of apparatus in a station can gain valuable experience in a few practice arrests by having the remaining members of the crew attached to the other end of the rope and running across the apparatus floor. Other methods may include the rigging of a pulley system within the hose tower and dropping an appropriate weight for belay practice.
Whatever procedure is used, practice is required to prepare the belayer for the unexpected impact generated by a fall. These methods not only emphasize the importance of proper techniques and the need for a bomb-proof anchor, but they build the crew’s confidence in the entire belay chain.
