We started with Pain
Relief and went through analgesics and the handling of injured
casualties.
There was a graphic
demonstration of why you should handle fractures carefully and apply
splints by breaking some pigs leg bones with a hammer and examining
the sharp broken bone edges.
This was followed by a
comparison of various stretchers used by different Teams, using the
SRT practice platform to haul a couple if stretchers. One was a
modified Neil Robertson stretcher and the other s Slyx.
This was followed by a
session on wear and damage on nylon slings and using a Lyon testing
rig to find out at what load some “Quick Draws” as used in rock
climbing, broke when subject to various forms of damage.
New Quick Draws with
no treatment rated at 22KN broke at 24KN. When wet, another new Quick
draw broke at 20KN, a 10% decrease. Taking another new Quick Draw and
cutting a tear for about 10% of its width resulted in a 10%
weakening. This is explained by there being 90% of the original Quick
Draw left.
Burning a part of yet
another new Quick Draw again weakened the sling as expected, again in
proportion to the amount of sling left undamaged. Lastly, a new Quick
draw was abraded and damaged for the full width so that it resembled
a Quick Draw which had seen plenty of use. This sling was weakened
much more than in other cases as parts of the sling's nylon filaments
were weakened for the full width of the Quick Draw.
Lastly, there was a
good wrap-up session about the week-end and the Conference was over
until next time.
Afterwards, Karen and
I packed our gear in the car and set off for Borrowdale in the Lake
District.
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