What You Should Know About Fall Rescue and Retrieval

Every employer understands how important it is to ensure the safety of their workers, especially where work at heights is involved. But one thing we can assure you is that even the most robust fall protection plans have weaknesses in them. And the most interesting part is that these gaps are commonly a result of unawareness.

To stay ahead of the game, you must educate yourself on what to do if the unexpected happens when your employees are working. Here are some tips to get you started.

1. Understand You Don’t Have A Lot of Time

The first thing you must understand is that every second counts when someone is left suspended in a harness. Fail to act fast, and it becomes highly likely for the worker to encounter suspension trauma, also known as orthostatic intolerance. The scariest part is that this can happen in as little as 20-30 minutes, sometimes even less, depending on a person’s health or the nature of injuries they’ve sustained from the fall.

And while time is of the essence, being able to resolve such issues correctly also matters a lot. For instance, you need to know how to position a victim of suspension trauma to avoid unwarranted issues like cardiac arrest. You can learn this and more about suspension trauma by getting your OSHA certification online from a renowned provider like RocketCert.

2. The Fall Victim May Not Be Able to Help

The good news about fall protection is that there are products that can help extend the amount of time it will take before suspension trauma sets in. For instance, there are packs you can attach to a harness and deploy them either manually or automatically if a worker falls. Such packs have straps or steps into which you place your feet to relieve the pressure on the legs.

Besides, when workers have phones or radios, the assumption is they will be able to communicate whenever an accident happens, right? Not really. Because the effectiveness of these fall protection solutions depends on the consciousness of the victim. There simply will be times when victims won’t be able to help you in the retrieval efforts. This is why you shouldn’t let anyone work at heights on their own.

3. Calling 911 Isn’t Always a Good Idea

One of the commonly overlooked realities in workplace safety is that emergency services, while invaluable, may not arrive quickly enough to safely retrieve a suspended worker. The main factors that cause delays in professional rescue are restricted building access, difficult rooftop locations, and even falls that happen in remote job sites.

And since the first few minutes following a fall are the most crucial, you should take them as your responsibility. For this to work effectively, you must create a rescue plan that clearly identifies who performs the rescue, what equipment they will use, how they should communicate, and how long rescues should take, depending on the situation.

As the trained coworkers retrieve the victim, you can then use this time to call emergency services, depending on the nature of the fall and the progress of the rescue.

4. Some Fall Rescues Aren’t Necessary

In OSHA’s hierarchy of controls, there is a part that focuses on engineering out the hazard. The reality is that you likely won’t be able to eliminate every fall hazard in construction, but there are certain tasks where you can use alternative solutions.

For instance, you can use rails for some situations instead of depending on fall arrest solutions. Or maybe consider a self-retracting lanyard (SRL) for use in areas with low-fall clearance.

When you use the right solutions to eliminate as many fall hazards as possible, you will rarely get to a point where you need to implement your fall rescue strategies.

Learn More About Fall Protection

Successful fall arrest, rescue, and retrieval plans are vital for any business whose workers generally have to work from elevated positions. But since no plan is infallible, you must create multiple backups to ensure maximum fall protection.

With a solid fall rescue and retrieval plan, you can be sure that no fall victim at your workplace will be in a position that threatens their health or even life. That’s why you want to check out rocketcert.com today if you want to master fall protection as a whole.