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Budimex 2017 Safety Week

News date: May 15, 2017
Budimex 2017 Safety Week

Representatives of the State Fire Service and Ambulance Rescue Services were invited to simulate a real-life rescue action and present means and techniques for conducting rescue actions at heights to both our company employees and subcontractors. The Fire Service assigned the code name of “Wiadukt-Lesiak” to the drill.
 

The rescue action was simulated on the tallest structure being constructed as part of this investment project – an extradosed bridge, 677 m in length and suspended at the height of 40 m over ground level. As per the drill’s scenario, the site manager called in the event at the 998 emergency number, providing the necessary information. As per the rescue action’s scenario, two employees had been injured while working on a load bearing slab suspended onto a pylon. They were knocked over by a load being transported and were now seriously hurt and unconscious. Two rescue and fire-fighting vehicles and a recognition and rescue vehicle from the Rescue and Fire-fighting Unit in Ostróda, equipped with a mechanical ladder provided by the Ostróda Voluntary Fire Service, were all dispatched from the fire service headquarters. 
 

Having recognised the situation on site and the inability to evacuate the victims with the help of the mechanical ladder, the action leader demanded specialist heights rescue groups to be dispatched at his disposal. The ladder’s thirty metre boom proved too short since the structure’s slab that the victims had found themselves at is suspended at the height of 40 m from the ground level. Already at the stage of the fire-fighters from the unit in Ostróda providing the victims with advanced first aid, they were joined by rescue at heights experts from the Rescue at Heights Specialist Group of the State Fire Service, arriving from Olsztyn and Gołdap. Another controlled accident happened during the rescue action, with the operator of the 60-metre tower crane falling and breaking his arm while going down the crane’s ladder.
 

With the injuries suffered, he was unable to continue down on his own. By using Alpine climbing techniques, the fire-fighters simultaneously evacuated the victims from the trolley placed on the edge of the bridge slab and the hurt operator stuck on the crane’s ladder. Once brought safely down from heights by the fire-fighters, the victims were taken over by the medical services and transported to hospital in an ambulance. 
 

The accident events simulation had been complicated and involved a number of different rescue skills. Organising the drill posed a new challenge for the rescue services while also checking the coordination of rescue units and allowing to learn about the specific nature of the structure currently under construction.
 

For a video from the drill go HERE.