17.11.2010

Emergency services to the rescue

A fire ladder was called out yesterday in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, UK, to rescue two men stranded around five metres up in a van mounted lift.

Sadly neither the operators nor the rescuers seemed to have had any notion about using the lifts emergency descent valves. The boom was retracted and over the rear of the van and could have been lowered into its stowed position.
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Two men transfer from platform to platform

We do not know what caused the failure, it could of course have been anything from running out of fuel to a technical fault, it looks as though it might have occurred as the men had just starter or were just finishing their work.

Vertikal Comment

This is hardly earth shattering news, but it does appear to perfectly demonstrate the all too often lack of knowledge that many users have over how to bring a lift down in the case of a breakdown.

It could be argued that understanding how to use the emergency down function is one of the most important pieces of information that a user needs to know before going up in a platform. As such it ought to be near the top of the list of things to pass on during hand-overs and operators ought to find and understand how the emergency descent works before going up.

Unless there is something in this particular case that we have not seen, the men could have avoided the need to take a ladder platform away from being on standby for more serious work and avoided the need for an aerial platform to platform transfer.