Safety at New River Academy
By: Sam Fulbright: Sam Fulbright is one of the student leaders and a senior at the New River Academy. Sam is sponsored by Feed the Rat well as Kavu and Teva.
While being based in Choshuenco, Chile the group took a day off from running waterfalls on the upper, and surfing the waves of the lower to get a safety lesson. Fergus Coffey from Expeditions Chile (http://www.exchile.com/) was our teacher, as he boasts an impressive knowledge of river safety. Big thanks to Fergus for taking the time to teach us.
We started at square one. We ran through all of the various ways of throwing a throw bag, and practiced where we wanted to throw the rope for the swimmer to best grab it. We practiced the underhand toss, the preferred method of most rescuers, as it allows a nice loft over the water, and it’s an accurate way to throw. Next up was the football toss; obviously this one is thrown like a football and is mostly used by people who have more experience throwing footballs. The last of the throws was the sidearm throw. The idea is not to just zing it out there, but rather give a nice arching throw to the victim. All the throwing went well, and students eventually even got to a coiling throw, where you coil the rope up quickly after a missed throw, and throw it back out to the victim.
After our throwing extravaganza, Fergus taught us how to save a foot entrapped victim. We set up a fake river on the shore of the lake, and set up a fake entrapment. Once the victim had entrapped himself, Fergus ran us through the set up for a rescue. We set up a tag line to get the victims head above water, and make sure he could breathe. After the tag line was set up and working, we set up a retrieving line. The retrieving line is set up on the back of the tag line to make a V to allow a potentially unconscious victim be pulled to shore after being freed. After the retrieving line is set up, another line is thrown across the river and run under the victim’s foot to pull it off the rock. After the foot is freed the victim, is pulled to shore and safety. It may seem complicated, but after a few practice runs the group got it down to about 1 minute for the rescue. The group is now prepared for general safety, and the group’s new safety skills were evident on the Upper Fuy run as the group was always stopping after harder rapids to set up a rope, keeping the group safe.
