UKH

Some poor guy is stuck hanging upside down at the top of an 80 m chimney in Carlisle:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/28/fire-chiefs-request-help-re...

I assumed it was some intoxicated nutter, but then I read that he is topless. No report of a beanie or a £400 crash pad, but could this be a case of buildering gone wrong?

Allegedly it was a drunken bet.  The thing I find more surprising is that the helicopter couldn't get him down.

Don't think they couldn't do it - After reading a short section on it I believe the helicopter was called off as they feared the down draft could cause a more serious issue ! 
pretty sure a dangling guy from a helicopter could secure him quickly - although what I know about helicopter rescues can be written on the back of a stamp with a marker.....

TFL

The authorities are after an 80m tall cherrypicker. Such a thing does exist, but can it get there in time?

https://www.elev8hire.com/truck-mounted-platforms/75m-105m-truck-mounted-pl...

From what I can gather.

ladder is not safe enough for anyone to attempt rescue from below

due to nature of guy hanging from his clothing and a leg they deem the downdraught of the helicopter unsuitable and likely to end in tragedy

90m cherry picker is indeed on the scene

reports are the guy had mental health issues

reports are the guy has died.

All I know for certain is a workmate was passing this morning and showed me a picture he took of the guy.  He is in the same position, legs and arms about 5hrs later.  He’s been there since about 3am this morning and it was 0dg at 8am today.

All joking aside, this sounds like my worst nightmare.

Drive past regularly, but never realised how tall it actually was... until seeing a fire platform at full height against it looking really weedy.  I don't hold out much hope for the guy.  It was certainly cold overnight.  

It used to be taller.  It’s been reduced in height over the years.  Still no confirmed reports on the guys welfare but I have a full picture of the 90m cherry picker about 6ft from the bloke and it is quite a sight. I imagine he is down by now.

Having been in various small MEWPs, I hate to think what kind of sway you get at the end of a 90m arm! Bet it feels a bit sickening.

Secondhand from someone who was chatting with the Heli crew parked next to our yard - his boot it caught on the top of the ladder, which is all that's holding him on.  As the Heli approached the down draft was moving his leg about hence the retreat.  

Sounds like they are bringing him down now. Hope he’s reasonably OK.

He's down https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-50207301

Sadly the Police have just announced the guy is dead.

Sad indeed. 

Bugger, I've been checking about this since this morning. Poor bloke.

Awful.

Ah, I see, that makes sense.  Thanks.

It's all a bit Toni Kurz, isn't it?

Yes. And a bit of Galston Mine. 

Did any climber volunteer to go up and try to get a sling round him or something?  I assume if so they were stopped from doing so as the ladder wasn't certified or somesuch?

If he could have been got the right way up and supplied with clothing and possibly morphine if the jammed leg was broken I'd imagine he could have sat it out for long enough while they worked out how to actually get him down.  And I doubt the ladder was any worse than I've seen on some via ferratas (and definitely no worse than Snakes, Ladders and Chains or whatever that slate quarry thing is called)...after all he got up there that way!

For me the situation was as follows.

- He was very lucky to still be alive when daylight came
- By then, with a mix of suspension, injury, hypothermia & alcohol, he could have died at any second
- Meaning: delay is death
- Working at height on a man-made structure has a very different feeling from trad rock
- The chimney has a roof of galvanised steel complete with multiple tie-in points (of unknown quality)
- The winch wire is the same length as the chimney height (higher winch, less downwash: spin problem?)
- Whatever else was going on, he clearly had one free leg
- The roof tie-ins provide a means for securing the top of the insecure ladder
- The roof tie-ins provide a means for supporting the casualty by the free leg

... ....

It looks from one of the pictures that the top ladder is where he was suspended from, and that it was damaged and not fixed in its usual place.  It doesn’t look like it would have been straightforward or safe to climb high enough to reach him.  

Fair enough, thanks.

MRT involved. They would have got him down if they could have. 

What the heck was he doing up there? Was he an Urbexer? There are plenty of reports on 28dayslater of people climbing mill chimneys for the bragging rights.

It's kinda weird to have people pondering in a critiquing sort of way when the best qualified people were involved. 

It didn't seem clear that MRT were involved from reports (and the likes of Grenfell show that sometimes emergency services control centres do make mistakes and don't involve the right people) - if they indeed were I'm confident they will have thought of all angles like that.

I don't think emergency services should be immune from open and public discussion and "this is how things could be done better next time" - without, of course, criticisms of specific individuals doing their best at the time.  The best qualified people were involved in Grenfell, but there are things that should be done better next time (hopefully no next time the same due to changed building regs - but no doubt there will be a slightly different next time) and may save more lives if they are.

(Along those lines the Grenfell Tower Enquiry Podcast is back for the next bit - well worth a listen, though quite difficult listening at times)

Drunk, allegedly.  Urbexers might well do such things but usually won't get themselves stuck and wouldn't have been up there topless at 2am in minus whatever.

But that aside, what's more or less stupid about climbing a chimney than climbing a rock face (if sober)?  Neither is necessary, both are done for the challenge/enjoyment.

Absolutely! It's incomprehensible why they didn't have a plan in place for a man hanging by his foot from a rickety ladder at the top of a 300 foot chimney. Come on Fire Service, get your act together.

It being Carlisle I figured the MRT would arrive at some point, I kept looking for updates a little concernedly for news of them helping. I get the impression that the fire service followed best practice for a situation where the building is actually up to safety regulations, which didn't turn out to be the case with tragic results. I think a culture of corner cutting to save costs in building flats, the 'slashing of red tape to aid efficiency and businesses', and probably the overlooking of the needs of poorer people too, all made a Grenfell type fire a likely occurrence. I suppose advising residents to stay in their flats has the benefit of knowing where to look to find people, and means that stairwells are clear(er) for the firefighters to attack the fire.

What surprises me about the chimney fellow is how easily (presumably) he had access to the ladder from the ground, there's always going to be somebody out there liable to cause themselves harm.

It all makes one thankful to be alive and well on a sunny day like today.

Been wondering that myself. There's a few old mills around where I live with these types of stacks and there's never any visible way to get up them. 

Been really feeling it for the guy since I heard the story. What an awful way to go. 

Or why the Bronze commander didn't simply get on the radio to the multi-agency Strategic Co-ordination Group and say "It's OK, a random bloke who says he's a climber has just turned up. He reckons it's a piece of piss to nip up and tie a rope round the casualty, we're going to let him have a go"

I guess qualification question 1 would be, do you have a 600ft rope?

This is as bad as Grenfell and people shouting "but you can't criticise the fire service".  That attitude prevents the process of continuous improvement which every organisation without exception should engage in.  (It's also similar to the way in the UK we don't share lessons learned from climbing accidents, FWIW - we should and I like the BMC's move towards doing that!)

It's not about blame or finger pointing, it's how next time something vaguely similar happens they might live.

There potentially could be improvements in how to manage incidents on the macro level.  Such as having something in place to obtain a large cherry picker more quickly in future if one is needed.  This particular incident might not occur for another 50 years, but how about a similar one on a residential tower block or something?

And suggesting improvements is not necessarily criticising the choices made in the context of the event.  It's revisiting things on the basis of changing evidence (can anyone else think where else that needs applying? )

This is true - normally they'd be closed off in some way so at least you prevent kids or opportunist drunks going up.

They might not have thought of it before, but now it has happened, so why not have "things where we need a massive cherry picker and where we can get one from without putting appeals out on the BBC News and Facebook" in the SOP?

(One lesson from Grenfell was that LFB had access to inadequate equipment and training for very high-level rescues - here's another similar lesson)

I've only seen today that MRT and Fire Service Rope access teams were involved.  I don't think that was mentioned in earlier reports.

As for the Grenfell issue,  my view is to look at it from this angle:

"Why didn't the fire service have a plan in place to deal with a building covered illegally in flammable panels?"  

To which the sensible answer is why on earth would anyone condone the illegal use of flammable panels by planning for it? 

Never mind planning for idiotic decisions to cover a building in something which clearly is dangerous to anyone with the teeniest bit of common sense, how about we enforce the law and keep the buildings safe by not letting idiots get paid vast amounts to not do their jobs at the council. 

Yes, lessons need to be learnt.  But I think the fire service is an easy target.  

More like "going forward, the fire service need a plan in place to deal with a tall building with a serious fire where the existing stay in place plan has failed or where the evacuation plan cannot work because e.g. all stairways have been destroyed".

Next time it might not be petrol-soaked matchwood up the outside, it might instead be some kind of terrorist attack.

Next time it might not be a muppet shinning up a chimney, it might instead be a worker stuck up an electricity pylon, a crane or a wind turbine, perhaps?

Or put a different way, if a plane crashes it's normally due to multiple issues.  You fix all of them without prejudice, not just one of them.

Again, continuous improvement is not about finger-pointing, it's about making things better.  It's not "what did we do wrong?" - it's "what can we improve to make us even more effective in future incidents?"

Maybe it's the sue-me culture that's ended up in everything being down to blame, but it really needn't be - it's more a case of how can it be better?

Interestingly Manchester Fire Service was heavily criticised post the arena bombing.It took the recoomendations on the chin and started to address them.Perhaps the LFB should have learnt from that?

The Fire Service inevitably is bound to be a feature of the report.And so it should be.

The report also focuses on the cladding and the building regs.Just as it should do.

Absolutely! It's incomprehensible

that’s no one Plans for Boris or David   Cameron 

Fire services have access to teams who exist solely to 'problem solve' things like this - normally under the banner of USAR (Urban Search and Rescue). They can rope down into a collapsed building, construct a retaining wall in minutes, extricate a severely injured casualty and then perform advanced first aid and provide immediate care - often whilst wearing KGs of PPE. 

Funnily enough - they were there for this incident. Here's a tweet:

https://twitter.com/StnMgr_USAR/status/1188950045141417984

Firefighters, and the tech rescue teams that exist within the various fire services, are the appropriate agency for dealing with jobs like this. VOLUNTEER MRTs, which are made up of experienced climbers and hillwalkers (plus other skillsets) are not. The volunteer mindset and ethos means that they can respond in a way that the statutory services cannot, and they are specialists in remote-area SAR and managing technically-intricate missing person incidents. They are not SEAL Team 6 however, and this weird assumption that MRTs have the ability to fix every problem at height is a bit mad.

At the end of the day - not everybody is going to be saved. The order of priority on any rescue is Self>Team>Casualty. You have to look to your own safety, that of the team and then the safety of the casualty. If winching down wasn't going to work and the ladder was unstable then the only way to deal with it was access from a different secure platform - which was what happened.

I feel for those involved on the day - having to stand off and effectively watch someone die is never going to be an easy day.

 

If it was a worker working at height then she or he would first be rescued by their trained and qualified colleagues - as required by law and industry practice. If you're dicking around on ropes or in confined spaces then you have people and kit around you to deal with the likely accidents. 

(where's Fawksey when you need him?)

Yer right •

anyone know why a mobile Crain and man rider was not deployed?

You know, I feel a bit daft now, at not having thought of fire services having to access difficult urban spots without the handy assistance of MRT - and having dedicated crew for that, but I'd never think that MRT's could fix all problems at height. 

I'm sure everything possible would have been tried or thought of before the cherry picker turned up to provide a stable platform, it would have been the kind of day which would stick with those involved for a fair while. Cycling past a dead cyclist on the road, once, stuck with me, and I wasn't involved in any sense.

When this first broke, I wondered how the bloke had got up as there wasn't a ladder up the side as far as I knew.  From the local news... Turns out this ladder was a temporary affair, lashed to the side while contractors were doing work on the chimney - and was due to be taken down. So not cage or support as such.  The ladder finished above ground.  The Chimney was in a gated compound.

Edit to add BBC story now updated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-50219403

Interesting to note the steeplejacks comments at the bottom regarding climbing the structure.

You mean apart from the big craney thing on wheels with the platform thing on the end?

Yes of course apart from that

A mobile crane would be more readily available than a cherry picker

For the benefit of the thread, it's that they felt that trying to climb the ladder may have dislodged him.

How on earth he got up 4.5m to get onto the ladders though I'm quite intrigued.

Maybe he was a climber; 10m of rope, weighted at one end, and a couple of prusik slings would do the trick.

It all went wrong for him in the worst way possible, but I can relate to the need for an enormous adrenaline kick to try to wipe out personal problems for a short time; a lot of us on this forum must have experienced a similar wish.