This Can Save Your Life

“You probably saved my life” he said.

I was teaching a confined space entry class and had just covered how unsafe rescue can not only be dangerous for the rescuer, but also can make it worse for the initially trapped victim. I told a story about how three men were about to enter a manhole to do some work. They did not test the atmosphere to make sure it was safe. The first man began his descent into the manhole and then fell to the bottom. The culprit was H2S, hydrogen sulfide gas. A coworker climbed down into the manhole after him to try to help. He fell as well. The third man wisely called 911. The rescue team arrived, and they were able to save the second man who had fallen. Unfortunately, the first victim could not be saved because he had been pushed under water when the second man fell on him.

“You probably saved my life” he explained “because in my last class I was told that if anyone goes down in a confined space, you had better go in after him right away because it’s going to take the rescue team a long time to get there. I didn’t know that without the proper rescue equipment and training, I could get myself killed and make things even worse.”

There are other ways that unauthorized, unsafe, and untrained rescue efforts can make things worse. As in medicine, the first rule of rescue is “First do no harm”. In other words, first make sure you don’t make things worse than they already are. That’s why we are not to try to pull victims from a vehicle if there has been an accident. Moving a victim in the wrong way can cause irreparable damage that can be avoided if we just wait for trained paramedics to arrive. Of course, if the vehicle is on fire, we would not have a choice, we’d have to get the victims out of the vehicle and to safety in the best way we can.

Rescue includes “packaging" the patient. This important step is to make sure we don’t do more damage by moving the victim incorrectly or perhaps dropping them. In trench rescue as well as in most confined space rescues, the patient will have to be lifted out of their position and situation, and proper packaging is critical to making this difficult task successful.

These are just some of the reasons that the confined space standard for construction includes a brief paragraph in the section on training, that says we need to teach the danger of rescue attempts to those who are not authorized to attempt rescues. Without the proper equipment and training these attempts can and do result in more fatalities.

I’ll close with another story that underlines this point. There was a trench cave-in that completely buried a worker. Co-workers immediately jumped into the trench to try to dig the victim out. When the fire fighters arrived, they had difficulty getting co-workers to leave the trench. The rescue team immediately got to work and set up their shoring to make the area safe. They then began the slow process of finding the victim and carefully digging him out. Once the victim was removed from the trench the firefighters noted that he had been struck by shovels four times. In their haste to help the victim, well-meaning coworkers didn’t really improve the victim’s chances. They did not understand the dangers of digging frantically, without knowing the exact location of the buried victim.

The ideal situation of course is not to get oneself in such a predicament in the first place. For example, never enter a confined space without first making sure all hazards are eliminated or controlled. And never enter an unsafe excavation. Make sure all hazards have been identified and eliminated.

However, if someone happens to be in the awful position of having to make such a decision about a rescue, hopefully logic will prevail over emotion. First, do no harm, and don’t make things worse. If you are not a rescue professional, if you do not have the required training and equipment, call 911 and wait for help.

This can save your life!