Crash of Two Subway Trains on the Williamsburg Bridge - New York City, NY » Rescue Techniques

The term “technical rescue” is often associated with operations that require complex equipment, techniques, and tactics. In this case, however, only basic ropes, pulleys, carabiners, and know-how were used to effect the rescues. The “technical” rescue involved hand-lowering patients in Stokes baskets down from the trackbed to the roadway below. This provides an excellent example of how simple techniques can be combined and applied to a situation in order to produce the wanted results.

Backboarded patients were placed into Stokes baskets. The loaded baskets were then lowered against 16-foot fire department ladders which had been placed so as to provide a stable surface to guide the basket down (see Figure 6 for a photograph of the placement of the ladder and the Stokes basket). No mechanical advantage hauling system was used to get the baskets up or down. It was thought that the increase in mechanical advantage which would have been afforded by a Z-drag or piggyback hauling system was not needed and would have required an unnecessary amount of time and effort to set up, especially given the relatively short distance that patients needed to be lowered. Instead, firefighters used a simple belay system and their own body weight to counterbalance the loaded Stokes baskets.

This system was fast and easy to set up and did not require advanced technical expertise or fancy equipment. The materials which were used are commonly found on ladder and rescue companies throughout the United States. This successful rescue operation underscores the fact that there is no advantage to be gained by using a complicated system when a simple approach will do the job just as well and just as fast.

The only extrication work that was necessary was the recovery of the motorman’s body. The impact had so severely crushed the front cab of the J train that the initial responders quickly realized that the crash had been “non-survivable” for the motorman. Responders had to work with mechanical spreaders and cutters for over twenty minutes to remove this victim.

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