High-angle rescues tend to involve one or two victims-perhaps a hiker who has become stranded on a cliff; individuals in a vehicle that has driven off a mountain road; or other individuals who have gotten themselves into a predicament requiring firefighters and other rescuers to use ropes, cables, capstans, helicopters, and other high-angle rescue methods.
Occasionally, however, a high-angle incident also becomes a multi-casualty emergency. When it does, firefighters and other rescuers are faced with competing problems that must be addressed simultaenously: accessing the victims, triaging them in terms of medical need and difficulty of their physical rescue, treating their injuries in high-risk environments, extricating them from vehicles when necessary, packaging them for lifting operations, and extracting them to safety.
Multicasualty, high-angle incidents are challenging to incident commanders, who must coordinate simultaneous critical operations. They must balance the need to treat the victims against the need to remove them from a hostile environment using technical means. They must evaluate the risk-vs.-gain equation when determining which strategies to adopt, ensuring a reasonable level of safety for the rescuers, including maintaining personnel accountability and rapid intervention capabilities in case of mishaps.
If you are a current subscriber,login hereto access this content.
If you would like to become a subscriber, please visit ushere.
