Keep in mind that most of the preferred methods for technical rescues are top-down repels/access as opposed to bottom-up belayed/lead climbing.
Rescue harnesses are designed for longer hang times, then a conventional lead climb harness. Class 3 harnesses are now the NFPA standard, with all loops, clips, rings, etc. are rated for general use or a particular rescue application.
Exactly. My "up" trip is almost always a matter of keeping my feet pointed in the right direction and letting others -literally- do the heavy lifting. A "shock load" is absolutely the last thing I want to experience.
Example: There was a cliff rescue right near my house. I wasn't on this call, I was out of town, however, here's what happened.
The cliff is about 400 feet tall. The injured climber was at about 150 feet. We have access to a 100' ladder truck (from another company) with a "pick point" at the tip, so it would have been a 50' vertical climb. Instead, they opted to start at the TOP, 250' above the climber, dropping a set of 500' lines, and then lowering down (and next to) the climber, packaging him, then going down to the ladder truck.
As to “pilot error proof”, if that is the polite way of saying is it idiot proof
, well no. Most Firefighters will tell you if there is way to break, override or defeat a safety feature; some Firefighter somewhere will break, override or defeat the system.
True story. A Halligan tool is an incredibly strong tool, you can use it as a hammer, you can hit it with a sledge, you can pry boulders with it, you can use it to pop a hole in metal. It's a rugged tool, as close to an indestructible object as you can find. You might loose them, they never break. Well, almost never. You see, when you use one as a wedge next to a seat in a wrecked car, and you don't pay attention, and you have a guy using "O" cutters on the "B" post, well, guess what? you can cut a halligan tool almost in half WHILE wrecking a perfectly good set of blades on the O cutters - 2 for 1! This happened while I was at a training program at another company, getting "advanced auto extrication" training, as it turns out, and right in the middle of class they got a real call. and we were jsut going over "situational awareness on scene" before this happened. Fortunately, the manufacturer of the equipment was with us on scene, and gave us a backup set of cutters out of their demo truck - and used the call wrap=up to pitch the newer technology, which would have not been damaged at all and would have cut right through the Halligan.
Anyway, back to rescue stuff. The best gear just works right, and "right" can't be defined exactly, other than you don't spend too much time worrying about if the gear will work (beyond the safety checks) and you spend your time thinking about what needs to be done.
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