Firefighers top a turbine in dizzying rescue missions

The crews from Dogsthorpe Fire Station had to get two ‘casualties’ to safety - from the top of a wind turbine in March.

Generators were turned off throughout the training exercise with firefighters working to two different scenarios – the first involving a casualty stuck at the top of the turbine who had to be lowered out of a hatch on a special stretcher; the second, a casualty who had to be lowered down a vertical ladder inside the turbine using a harness.

The event was organised by organised by Station Commander Ady Slack from Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service and energy supplier EON.

Watch Commander Jon Crowley said the watch faced two main challenges when completing the exercise.

“The main challenge was in terms of getting up. It was an arduous, long climb in our PPE (full personal protective equipment). The other main difficulty once we were up there was it was very tight, cramped working conditions.”

The watch used EON’s own ‘working at height’ equipment. Using a stretcher they lowered a weighted dummy down the outside of the wind turbine.

Firefighters did, however, use their own harnesses and a scaffolding hook. They climbed the inside of the turbine using a fall arrest system to get to the top safely. This involved attaching themselves to a wire that runs up the middle of a ladder so that if anyone falls the rope snags, preventing a fall of more than a metre.

Richard Couzens, Regional Production Manager for E.ON, described the training exercise as “one of the largest scale emergency training exercise conducted in the UK for E.ON’s onshore wind farms.”

He said E.ON had invested lots of effort and training into emergency procedures for its own staff already, adding that it would only contact fire and rescue in more unusual situations such as entrapment, where their own staff were unable to free someone trapped within a turbine.

“The exercise was more about familiarising CFRS with our wind turbines and helping them to have a strategy to help them deal with emergencies. We certainly achieved everything we wanted to,” he said.

SC Slack said: “Other fire services throughout the Country are starting to look towards planning for such incidents and I feel we have made good progress early to look at what crews may be faced with if called to assist others with any rescue.”

E.ON training teams and senior health and safety managers also attended along with members of CFRS’ Operational Support Group and Health and Safety.