The Mercy Community Hospital (MCH) Paramedic Department instituted a Rope Rescue Team in the summer of 1995. This team was developed to assist fire and police departments in rope rescue and confined space emergencies. Rope rescue techniques provide unlimited options and tactics for many rescue operations. Confined space operations rely extensively on rope rescue techniques. Harnesses, tag lines, rappelling, and mechanical advantage systems all lend themselves to confined space entries and extrication. But what about water rescue? Divers and rescuers rappelling from steep embankments, overpasses, and bridges can often reach a victim when other methods are too timely or not available. Crisis intervention for suicide inclined jumpers has started to incorporate rope rescue operations in their strategies for protecting the negotiator or retrieving the victim. Auto extrication operations can be supplemented with certain rope tactics (i.e., bringing victims up steep embankments or rappelling from bridges to vehicles below or to a precariously hanging from a bridge). All of these special operations can benefit from proper rope rescue techniques by offering the Rescue Company officer another means of strategy and tactics for handling emergency situations.

Each member of the team has completed basic and advanced firefighting along with various types of rescue courses. In addition, each individual has completed a 40-hour Rope Rescue I course, and a 40-hour Rope Rescue II course that consisted of high angle and confined space training.

Rope rescue techniques and hardware configurations are extremely technical. It is for this reason that the MCH Team has mandatory training sessions each month that consists of knots, hardware, rope, anchors, mechanical advantage systems, patient packaging/litter rigging, and victim pick-offs. Each team member is encouraged to train during working hours and to expand their knowledge of rope rescue by attending seminars and other rescue schools. Currently, two team members, Armand Alessi and Joe Reynolds, are members of Pennsylvania's Urban Search and Rescue Team (FEMA) as Rescue Specialist.

For further information regarding the Rope Rescue Team, contact Armand Alessi at 610-645-3834.