ace1 - 16 January 2011 05:38 PM
I am not a mountain professional but I am a medical professional. Irrecoverable hypoxic brain injury sets in 5-7 minutes after you stop breathing. So if you pull someone out lets say in the 15 minutes that we read about and successfully perform CPR and resuscitate your buddy the chances are they will have permanent brain damage. Even in the best case scenario it will take at least 2 minutes to make that call and that lost 2 minutes will not be made up by the arrival of a rescue team; no matter how quickly help arrives they will not dig my buddy out in the GOLDEN 5-7 minutes, and that is why I would dig first in single burial scenario, and I would like that to be done for me if I am under the snow.
Looking back to the source of the comments that David mentioned you should realise that there’s not an entirely realistic estimate of how long it does actually take to locate and partly recover someone. If you take a good point of measurement as being the time at which you’ve reached a person and cleared their airways then you’ll be extremely lucky (in anything other than a near surface burial) to recover someone in 10 or 15 minutes. People really, really need to try and move over avalanche debris and dig in it because they’re entirely failing to appreciate the difficulties. I can locate a couple of transceivers in a couple of minutes or a single one in less than 1min30s but I don’t conclude from that I can actually dig a couple of people out in anything like that time. People should think about the most unfavourable scenario, a large avalanche above them, trying to move up through the debris and then digging.
You’ve probably hit the nail on the head though, if I really thought a client could repeatedly dig me out in under 10 minutes after a slide then I’d probably/possibly say they ought to get on with it. But, I don’t think that, I think I want the experts in the air right away.
The golden figures about survival are more quoted than understood it seems to me sometimes. Your survival chances may well be higher if recovered in 10 or 15 minutes but 90-odd percent of a small number remains a small number.
ace1 - 16 January 2011 05:38 PM
Having said that when faced with a crisis situation such as the recent avalanches we all have to do what we feel is right under the circumstances, but I think there is little place for making sweeping statements that under all circumstances you should call for help first.
I think the medical profession really rather like protocols. The medical consultants that come in and do training for us, and I was with one just last week, do tell us we need to get help and to do that right away and that’s pitched at people who do know what they’re doing and do have first aid skills.
I’d also point out that you or I might be able to do CPR, and have a range of other skills for that matter, but it’s far from commonplace in UK skiers particularly. Here in Switzerland young people would actually tend to have those skills, either as part of military training or their basic driving training. In fact, just reading this thread again three things leap out at me :
1. If skiers think they’re going to do “companion rescue” then practicing with a transceiver just doesn’t cut it. They’re going to need some first aid skills. So the money spent on some new fat skis might be better spent on a first aid course (for example http://www.recfirstaid.net/cms/index.php but there are others)
2. They need to be able to describe where they are. We’ve a word (in professional circles) when you can’t describe where you are, it’s “LOST” so maps and an idea how to use them (some courses like http://www.nnas.org.uk/ and I’ve heard the Swiss guy is particularly good )
3. Try and move (up a hill) in avalanche debris and dig in it and then understand whipping out that flash transceiver and getting a probe return is the easier bit. It’s worth being blindingly quick at it so you can move quickly to the real work.
There isn’t a whole load of doubt about this, the first thing you need to do is call for help if there’s a signal. If you’re going to turn round and say that’s not optimum if there’s two of you one of whom is buried then take a second and recall that’s why we think that safest method of travel is a small group, say four people, travelling at safe distances and not exposing the whole group to danger. If you’re not in the configuration then you’re already a step or two down the accident chain before the avalanche even starts.