How would you rescue an injured casualty in a confined space? When a team of Wokingham firefighters visited All Saints church tower in Wokingham last year they realised it would be very challenging to rescue anyone who was injured while working among the bells.
Last Friday they returned to test their skills in this challenging environment, along with colleagues from Bracknell and from South Central Ambulance Service Hazardous Area Response Team,
The two ‘casualties’ had different injuries and were in the pits under the bells, and the aim was to remove them safely. One casualty was an 80kg dummy and the other was the Wokingham Fire Service Chaplain who, unlike the dummy, was able to complain when the lifting harness dug into her neck and when her head protection pushed down over her face so she couldn’t see.
The first challenge was to work out how to get the casualties out of the pit without making their injuries worse – one a spinal/neck injury and in the other a severe leg fracture. There weren’t many options. The team also had to bear in mind their own safety. Moving around a bell frame requires care even if you are familiar with it, and most of them had never even seen a bell chamber so it was an alien environment where an incautious move could have led to a fall.
The teams carry packs of equipment that they might need, including ropes, harnesses, and lifting gear. They were lucky that there are beams above the pits where the casualties were, which could support lifting gear,
The first casualty was fitted with a lifting harness – not easy when she was in a bell pit with an injured leg. The ropes from her harness went over pulleys slung from the overhead beam, and pulled by rescuers in other bell pits. Getting her high enough to move over the adjacent bell was difficult but they managed it with a bit of help from her good leg. Once at the door she was able to ‘bum shuffle’ down the narrow spiral stair with her weight carried by the rope from above, a rescuer below to support her injured leg and another behind to guide her.
The second casualty needed to be kept straight, which made lifting out of the pit more difficult, especially since the casualty was a dummy and couldn’t cooperate. The ambulance team had a special stretcher, like a sheet of stiff plastic that could be rolled around the casualty into a stiff tube that would support him. Unfortunately the bell pit was too narrow to open it, let alone get the dummy onto it. So they had to use a different stretcher (the one the dummy came up on). It didn’t wrap round so they had to lash the casualty securely, including the arms to stop them catching on anything.
The stretcher came out of the pit OK, with a rope on one end going over a pulley above, but then it met another problem. The door is quite narrow, and the stretcher had to be turned head on to fit through it, which was difficult because a bell wheel was in the way. Once past that obstacle the stretcher was lowered down the spiral stairs, guided by rescuers and with its weight carried by the rope above.
The exercise took two and a half hours, with the clock rapidly approaching 11pm when it ended.
John Harrison, Steeple Keeper at All Saints said: “As a civilian observer, I found it interesting watching a lot of people in a confined and slightly hazardous space, all of them trained but not all having worked together before, collaborating in the rescue of two seriously injured people (even though on this occasion the injuries weren’t real).
Watch Manager Sam Batten from Wokingham Fire Station said “This was a fantastic opportunity for us to work collaboratively with our colleagues in the SCAS HART team to simulate the rescue of two casualties stuck inside a bell tower. It’s not often we are given opportunities to train in such environments, and is incredibly beneficial to us. I’m very grateful to John Harrison for giving up his time and Wokingham All Saints Church for entrusting us to work inside their historic bell tower”.
The full story with pictures is on the tower website at: allsaintswokinghambells.org.uk
