Height Safety Ground Crew course

 

One of the primary jobs that the Brisbane SES does is storm damage operations, which can (and usually does) involve climbing on people’s roofs and putting tarps over holes, removing precarious-looking tree limbs and replacing damaged tiles. That sort of thing. So one of the more popular courses that’s offered is Height Safety, which qualifies you to be part of a height safety team. The smallest team size is four members – two on the roof and two on the ground. This course qualifies me to be part of the ground crew.

 

Now, getting on a roof sounds easy but it can get pretty dangerous, especially if the roof has sustained damage, or there are precarious looking tree limbs hanging about. So, as well as proper safety training and pure common sense, we use an elaborate series of ropes and pulleys to make sure no-one will fall off the roof or hurt themself. This is called a Travel Restraint system as it stops anyone wearing the harness attached to the rope from getting into a position where they could fall off the roof.

 

It was really interesting learning about all the equipment used, a lot of similar (if not the same) stuff we use rock climbing – karabiners, Petzl shunts, rescue 8s. Also, it was fun to put all that knot tying into practice. We also learnt about natural and improvised anchor points and rescue techniques if one of you team members on the roof does get in trouble.

 

This is a good qualification to have now, especially as storm season is coming up!

 

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