Peutz Valley: If hanging off a 200 foot cliff on a rope, and slowly being lowered into an area full of posion oak is your thing....well you missed out. Lakeside crews travelled to the Peutz Valley area to conduct a multi-company drill in the rugged terrain above El Capitan Reservoir.
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| Departure point for crew members going over the side. |
Crews conducted a drill that involved lowering personnel into an inaccessible area 200’ below the trail network. In technical rescue it’s essential that we get personnel to the victim as quickly as possible. The status of the victim will determine on how we will extricate the victim. It’s important that these injured parties received prompt definitive care at a hospital, so our entire plan revolves around this goal.
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| Engineer Robert Williams about halfway down the cliff. After this point the "fun" with the poison oak begins. |
Crews are tasked with anchoring to rocks and vegetation in the area, with sufficient strength to conduct rescue operations. This tends to put some out of their comfort zone as firefighters are use to anchoring to 40,000 pound fire trucks. But with load sharing anchoring, and a back-up safety line, these rescue are pretty safe.
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| If you look carefully you can see the firefighter on the cliff. At this point they are about a quarter of the way down |
Submitted By: Captain Mark Grow, Lakeside Fire District
It might just be another day on the job for you guys, but for most of us, that's simply incredible. I hope they all managed to avoid the poison oak!
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