Lanyard setups for bucket truck use

ctree

ctree

New member
For those of you flying a bucket what are you using for a lanyard. Are you using a shock absorbing lanyard(sal) or the same lanyard you would climb with. I use the lanyard I climb with, attached to my bridge on my TM. I have wondered if, god forbid, I spill out of the bucket will my lanyard handle the load like a sal? Thoughts and feedback appreciated.
 
Anyone I've worked with in a bucket uses a bungee lanyard, and for good reason I think.

Imagine running at a brick wall as fast as you can and jumping into it. Pretty abrupt stop, and your organs are gonna feel it.

Now put a trampoline in front of the wall. Sure you'll still hit the wall, but the stretch is going to reduce the impact by quite a bit.

For the mild investment a bungee lanyard is, I think it's well worth it. If I did bucket work, I wouldn't hesitate to buy one.

Work safe!
Matt
 
It sounds as if you are flying with your normal every day work positioning harness. If so I would recommend (I believe ANSI and OSHA do as well) a fall protection harness. This is a full body harness with a dorsle attachment (between your shoulder blades). With of course the previously mentioned shock absorbing lanyard.

Seeing as how we are imagining things, picture this.... Falling out of the bucket attached to your waist in front, that's gonna hurt just a little :rayos:. My back hurts just thinking about it. The full body harness spreads the load over all of its contact points and orients you upright and slightly forward.
;)
~\~
^
Ps many WP harnesses have the rated fall protection upper you can buy, I'm not sure the TM is one of them :pinguino:.
 
Also another thing to be aware of many fall protection harnesses have leg straps that are stowed until needed. These can be deployed so that you can stand up and take weight out off of strained parts. I can not speak to this for outside of DOD but they require us to shock absorbers even for working in and rebar stacks for a safety not work positioning of course.
 
OSHA violation to be in a bucket without a fall protection harness, and the TM does not count as a fall protection harness. Needs to be dorsal attachment specifically. I'll have to do some digging to find the article I'm thinking about, but a while back I read an article in a concrete equipment magazine that explained some of the reasoning behind the dorsal attachment. Basically, they're trying to prevent whipping the head around, either in suspension or in contact with something. Dorsal attachment and full body harness also severely limits the possibility of coming out of a harness during a fall. In addition, the dorsal attachment also presents the smallest profile for rescue. If you're lifting or lowering deadweight, would you rather deal with something 30" diameter and 6 feet long, or something 30" tall and 6 feet wide?

Back to suggestions as to what to do in your bucket. If the bucket doesn't have an attachment point, get a boom strap. To said attachment point or the boom strap I'd connect either a lanyard with deceleration pack or a Self Retracting Lanyard. I'm partial to SRL's myself, it stays out of the way when moving in the bucket and I like the reminder from the spring tension. If you don't want to upgrade to a harness with a dorsal point, it's easy enough to pick up one of the basic fall arrest harnesses and wear it with your TM. FallTech and Guardian both have models under $50, for example.


Heh, as a total tangent, whenever someone starts complaining about how expensive tree harnesses are, have em look up arc-flash/welding certified tower climbing harnesses. Paid close to a grand for mine, and that was a few years ago. It's a closet queen most of the time, but I can't complain, the job I needed it for paid for it and a few other pieces of specialized gear, like my Oxylance. For those of you wondering, we removed a decrepit hillside staircase and cleared the path for a brand new staircase and hillside elevator, then helped the install crew the mfg of the hillovator sent out.
 
Magnum783 said:
Also another thing to be aware of many fall protection harnesses have leg straps that are stowed until needed. These can be deployed so that you can stand up and take weight out off of strained parts. I can not speak to this for outside of DOD but they require us to shock absorbers even for working in and rebar stacks for a safety not work positioning of course.
Click to expand...

This is a really important point. I don't think I have personally seen a fall arrest harness with these optional leg straps that allow you to stand up and take pressure off after you inadvertantly take a fall and end up hanging by your dorsal attachment.

These leg straps could save your life, I think. I don't know how accurate what I'm about to say is; I never followed up and did my own research, but I was told during a safety briefing that rescuers might only have about 15 to 30 minutes to get you down out of a harness, because suspension trauma can kill you. I think it has to do with pressure on the femoral arteries, possibly. Having the straps available that allow you to stand up in the harness and take pressure off of the back of the legs can save your life, I believe.

Thinking about this, it might be nice to see if it's possible to hang an access line off of a solidly anchored point within the bucket, with a climbing system attached at the bottom of the rope, ready to be employed if needed. If the bucket operator was not too badly hurt when they got tossed out of the bucket, the access line and climbing system might provide the opportunity for self-rescue, as opposed to hanging there waiting forever for a whole fire crew to be deployed to assist you.

Tim
 
TimBr said:
This is a really important point. I don't think I have personally seen a fall arrest harness with these optional leg straps that allow you to stand up and take pressure off after you inadvertantly take a fall and end up hanging by your dorsal attachment.

These leg straps could save your life, I think. I don't know how accurate what I'm about to say is; I never followed up and did my own research, but I was told during a safety briefing that rescuers might only have about 15 to 30 minutes to get you down out of a harness, because suspension trauma can kill you. I think it has to do with pressure on the femoral arteries, possibly. Having the straps available that allow you to stand up in the harness and take pressure off of the back of the legs can save your life, I believe.

Thinking about this, it might be nice to see if it's possible to hang an access line off of a solidly anchored point within the bucket, with a climbing system attached at the bottom of the rope, ready to be employed if needed. If the bucket operator was not too badly hurt when they got tossed out of the bucket, the access line and climbing system might provide the opportunity for self-rescue, as opposed to hanging there waiting forever for a whole fire crew to be deployed to assist you.

Tim
Click to expand...
I think it's actually less than 30min. Hopefully @Steve Connally will chime in. He has far more experience in the rescue aspect than most of us.
 
Yeah, Magnum, I thought I remembered them saying they had 15 minutes, but this safety briefing I got was a long time ago, and 15 minutes seems like a ridiculously short time hanging to cause a fatality. Maybe it really is possible though. I don't know why it had not occurred to me about Steve having expertise in this area.

What say you, @Steve Connally? It's ok if you might not know, we're just hoping.

Tim
 
Here's a link to a Wikipedia article on the subject. I just found it, so I still have to finish reading it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_trauma

Tim

P.S. Also, under the "Exteral Links" heading at the bottom of the page, there is this interesting link to a free PDF document entitled "Harness Hang Syndrome: Fact and Fiction", which I think might be worth a look.
 
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Wow, I just finished reading that PDF document I mentioned above, and the things it says in there are absolutely shocking. Must read material, in my opinion. In a nutshell, when you are hanging suspended by only your harness, don't stop moving.

I'm seeing the value of aerial rescue skills now, but someone would need to be really skilled and really fast to save someone suffering from Harness Hang Syndrome.

It never gets mentioned in the article, but it seems to me as though the main cause of problems in this scenario is the body's inability to effectively pump blood back up to the heart and the brain, effectively starving it of oxygen and causing a loss of consciousness and then death. With a dorsal attachment, it would be impossible for a stranded climber to tip themselves over at the waist, thereby putting the head lower than the feet, and allowing blood to flow back into the chest and head via a gravity assist.

This makes me think that our standard work positioning harness used in combination with one of those fall-arrest streaming lanyards might be a better solution. I would want such a harness to incorporate a good, life support rated set of suspenders that could prevent an operator from falling out of his or her harness.

I'd rather take my chances with my head being able to move around, but retaining my ability to lower my head and get blood back into it.

That's all.

Tim
 
Hanging by the dorsal or ventral connection point on a full (fall arrest) harness, such as any modern tower climbing harness, is no worse and no better than any other style harness regarding HHS. As all of those articles/papers concluded, the only real solution is to not let it happen. Once it does, it's a race against time regardless of the harness type. For the bucket truck scenario, the solution is to lower the bucket using the ground controls. If the lift is inoperable, I think we can safely assume the guy in the bucket will have the sense to have a climbing system handy, but you never know. In a tree, it's quite easy for us to get into a position that isn't stressing or exhausting us completely. An uncontrolled swing, a whack upside the head with a log, etc. can knock us out cold and leave us in a position for HHS to be a serious issue, though. Hence all the discussion on the forums about rescue training and ways of dealing with this.

It's a very real, serious and life threatening thing, Tim... in a work environment or rec climbing... and if having someone right there that can get you down quickly isn't an option, then the prevention thing becomes the most important thing you can be thinking about at the start of your climb, and during it. Some day, maybe there will be a lowering device that monitors your heart rate, etc. and lowers you to the ground if it detects the onset of HHS... but I'm not holding my breath. But, in the meantime, I wouldn't worry too much about whether your harness style lets you put your head between your legs, unless you really, really want to kiss your ass goodbye before you pass out. ;)
 
Thanks for all the great info. I wear my TM 50% of the time and my full body the other 50%. I'll switch to my full body full time now except in those cases where I know I will need to get out and do some climbing. I like the suggestion of wearing a basic full body under my TM and may try that. This is something that's been on my mind and know that falling out on my lanyard would be like a dog coming to the end of its leash but was wondering what others are doing in the industry. Its easy to say I'm not going to fall out of the bucket but we all know you don't plan on having an accident.
 
JeffGu said:
Hanging by the dorsal or ventral connection point on a full (fall arrest) harness, such as any modern tower climbing harness, is no worse and no better than any other style harness regarding HHS. As all of those articles/papers concluded, the only real solution is to not let it happen. Once it does, it's a race against time regardless of the harness type. For the bucket truck scenario, the solution is to lower the bucket using the ground controls. If the lift is inoperable, I think we can safely assume the guy in the bucket will have the sense to have a climbing system handy, but you never know. In a tree, it's quite easy for us to get into a position that isn't stressing or exhausting us completely. An uncontrolled swing, a whack upside the head with a log, etc. can knock us out cold and leave us in a position for HHS to be a serious issue, though. Hence all the discussion on the forums about rescue training and ways of dealing with this.

It's a very real, serious and life threatening thing, Tim... in a work environment or rec climbing... and if having someone right there that can get you down quickly isn't an option, then the prevention thing becomes the most important thing you can be thinking about at the start of your climb, and during it. Some day, maybe there will be a lowering device that monitors your heart rate, etc. and lowers you to the ground if it detects the onset of HHS... but I'm not holding my breath. But, in the meantime, I wouldn't worry too much about whether your harness style lets you put your head between your legs, unless you really, really want to kiss your ass goodbye before you pass out. ;)
Click to expand...

Jeff, thanks a lot for this really great and well-reasoned response.

As to the last part, I hesitated to bring up the old joke about having enough hair on my ass to weave an indian blanket, and that therefore making it quite difficult for me to kiss my own ass goodbye. Apparently my judgement and discretion have just gone right out the window, though, which is why I'm writing this now.

Tim
 
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