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“Unless you are a fire department, NFPA is probably not the right resource to guide you”

On the topic of standards and regulation, sometimes people look to NFPA 1983 for guidance in selecting a harness for rescue. Unless you are a fire department, NFPA is probably not the right resource to guide you, but let’s start there anyway.

NFPA 1983 is a manufacturing standard, and acknowledges two types of harnesses: Class II and Class III – the former being a Seat Harness style, and the latter being a Full Body harness style. This standard is largely written by and for urban/municipal fire department personnel, with the result being that many rescuers in the large, urban fire departments do wear Class 3 full body harnesses. Even so, the standard does still allow for seat harnesses – primarily for the benefit of the large proportion of rural or small town fire departments that do not see the frequency of industrial accidents and who may not need full body harnesses.

NFPA 1858 is the user-companion document to NFPA 1983; it is intended to help address some of these kinds of questions and can be viewed here.  The bit of this standard that deals with harnesses is section 5.4. It explains that the organization shall consider its needs for performance or features – and then has an appendix dialog (A5.4) which says (among other things): Specialized harnesses might be required for different types of operations and then goes on to describe the differences between Class II and Class III, finishing with the statement that “While both types of harnesses are capable of fall arrest, the most commonly used industrial fall protection attachment points are sternal or dorsal, which requires a full body harness. NFPA 1983 requires that both the Class 2 and Class 3 harnesses pass a head-down drop test to verify the harness will not allow the user to fall out of it.” Again, you can see here, both harnesses are considered appropriate for vertical work, and the main reason for using a Class 3 harness would be to accommodate industrial fall protection connections such as are common to fire departments in urban environments – which, again, is the primary population served by this NFPA equipment standard.

NFPA 1983 can also be viewed online, free of charge, here. If you look at paragraph 1.1.5, you will see that it specifically states that “this standard shall not specify requirements for any rope or associated equipment designed for mountain rescue, cave rescue, lead climbing operations, or where hazards and situations dictate other performance requirements.” So, what this says is that, according to the NFPA 1983 standard, the NFPA 1983 standard doesn’t apply to you if you are engaging in mountain rescue operations.

“what are your criteria for choosing a harness?”

A more applicable standard relative to Mountain Rescue activities is ASTM F1772, Standard Specification for Harnesses for Rescue and Sport Activities. This standard is promulgated by the ASTM F32 Committee on Search and Rescue, which is written by and for members of mountain rescue teams, rather than the fire service.

The ASTM F1772 standard “covers harnesses for human use in technical rope rescue and climbing, mountaineering, caving, canyoneering, and other rope-based sport activities” (para 1.1) and further clarifies that “Due to the diverse requirements of various rescue activities and environments, any of the included harness types may be suitable for rescue, including those marketed principally for climbing” (para. 5.3).  The standard specifications and test methods found in this standard are essentially analogous to those found in the UIAA 105 harness standard and the European EN 12277 standard.

So, what are your criteria for choosing a harness? As a mountain rescuer, I would suggest

• Wide enough waistbelt and leg loops to allow the harness to be comfortably worn in suspension for a reasonable period of time
• A low enough ventral attachment point to be able to lead climb if you need to
• A high enough ventral attachment point to allow the wearer to sit reasonably upright
• Lightweight enough to be able to comfortably carry and use in the backcountry
• Low profile enough to permit the kinds of agility usually required in mountain and wilderness environments
• Not a lot of metallic parts to conflict with mountaineering gear
• Highly adjustable for different weather/clothing situations

If you are a fire department or an industrial rescue team doing mostly industrial/urban operations, NFPA Class III would be a very appropriate standard for you to use as a reference.

If you are a fire department that does mostly urban-interface operations, an NFPA 1983 Class II harness would be a very appropriate standard for you to use as a reference; or, if you want extra weight to carry, an NFPA Class III harness would work also.

If you are a mountain, wilderness, or cave rescue team, an ASTM F1772 harness – or a European equivalent – makes a lot more sense for you.

Hopefully, this information will help provide at least some guidance that will result in the most appropriate harness choice for your application, and will also help purchasing agents to realize how a “more-is-better” approach could actually result in increased risk to rescuers.

This will enable you to better utilize the same sorts of industrial fall protection equipment used in these types of workplaces.  This, incidentally, is why you see many urban municipal fire departments using full-body, industrial-type harnesses for rescue – most of their responses are to those kinds of workplaces, and they generally can drive their truck to within a short distance of the subject. We will talk about standards in a moment, but typically this is what we refer to as an NFPA Class III harness. These will typically weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 pounds, and cost around $300-500 and upward, depending on features.
On the other hand, if you are a fire department with relatively few industrial callouts, but mainly working in the urban-interface of parks with cliff faces, car-over-the-edge, or similar areas, a full body harness is probably overkill – especially if you need greater agility. In this case you might more appropriately consider a Seat Harness, such as an NFPA Class II or an ASTM 1772 harness. You’ll find these weighing in at 2-4 pounds and at a cost around $200-300, again depending on features.

However, if the majority of your rescue operations are in a mountain or wilderness environment, you are likely much better served to consider choosing something akin to a climbing harness, but with more padding and adjustability. Most importantly, you will probably want to avoid metal D rings (and the alignment challenges they present) so that you can better utilize the same sorts of mountaineering equipment used in such environments and so that it is not too heavy. This is why you see so many rural, wilderness, or backcountry rescue teams using climbing style seat harnesses for safety – because most of their responses are to mountain environments where this type of gear is most appropriate – and they often have to carry gear a great distance. These might meet ASTM 1772 or a European equivalent standard will weigh around 1 pound, and can often be purchased for under $100.

Each of these types of harnesses is perfectly safe and appropriate for working at height, in suspension, but their different features make them more appropriate to different applications. Kind of the same reason we don’t wear turnout boots or bunker gear in the backcountry. Trying to use industrial rescue equipment in wilderness environments would make about as much sense as trying to use wilderness rescue equipment in industrial environments. Although there may be some crossover with a limited range of equipment, the criteria for choosing is quite different.

”Beginning”

To begin with, OSHA regulation does not address harnesses other than those used for Industrial Fall Protection and Construction Fall Protection (including those used in confined spaces.) The regulatory language in these standards describe harnesses as being part of a fall arrest system that permits up to 6’ fall on a dorsal attachment – something that is generally not acceptable in rigging for vertical rescue operations, due to the increased hazards that would be imposed on rescuers.

“Harnesses for work at height and harnesses for rescue are two very different things”

Sometimes those who are trying to make decisions without the full scope of information can misunderstand this… Harnesses for work at height and harnesses for rescue are two very different things… just as shoes for industrial safety and shoes for mountaineering are two very different things.

Outside of Confined Space operations, OSHA does not actually address rescue, other than to say that a worker who has fallen into fall protection must be rescued promptly. Even in the realm of confined space, which is the only place they really talk about rescue in any detail, OSHA does not address rescue equipment (see interpretation letter which states there are no specifications for rescue equipment.)

OSHA may someday address rulemaking for emergency services responders, but as of now, the few references smattered throughout regulation are inconsistent and out of date (see link). As rescuers we should defer to their own acknowledgment of this and look elsewhere for guidance.

“Best Practice can be a bit subjective”

At present, we are best served to consider Industry Standards (ASTM, NFPA) and Industry Best Practice (what you see happening in real life) as a guide for how to best equip emergency services responders for rope rescue. Industry Best Practice can be a bit subjective and specific to application, environment, or even local custom, so here we will focus on decision-making processes and related standards.

To establish some background for this post, I (the author) have been a member of an active mountain rescue team in the front range of Colorado since 1985. I have also served with two fire departments over the course of my career (plus the Yellow Jackets wildland crew, which doesn’t really apply here…) and have been involved in research, testing, and standards development related to rescue since 1987. I presently serve with NFPA 1983, ASTM F32, and ANSI Z359 standards committees (among others) and am CEO of PMI. We manufacture and distribute life safety rope and equipment, and offer related training through our Vertical Rescue Solutions training arm, for a wide range of work and rescue applications, ranging from Fire-Rescue to Industrial Fall Protection, Mountain Rescue, Caving, and more.

In short, the general approach taken by most responding agencies (and standards developers, for that matter) is that emergency responders should be protected to at least the same level of protection as would be appropriate for the person(s) whom they might be called to rescue. If responding to a confined space emergency, they should be equipped with appropriate confined space PPE and equipment.  If responding to a cave emergency, they should be equipped with appropriate caving PPE and equipment. If responding to an industrial fall protection emergency, they should be equipped with appropriate emergency fall protection PPE and equipment. If responding to a mountaineering or climbing emergency, they should be equipped with appropriate mountaineering or climbing PPE and equipment… the list goes on, but you get the idea.

You will notice the phrase above, should be protected to at least the same level of protection… Let’s expound on that a little bit because there is a tendency in our society to lean toward a philosophy that “more is better” – which could erroneously lead to the idea that a full-body harness is better than a seat harness because there is more material there.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

“a very limited range of features that are unique to each type of harness”

Harnesses are designed for different applications with much, much more than just the “seat vs full body” question as consideration. For example:

• some of the more robust rescue harnesses will have a large, supportive waistbelt and a high front-waist attachment, to facilitate greater comfort in suspended operations.
• A caving harness, on the other hand, has a thinner, lighter waistbelt and a VERY low front-waist attachment, so that it adds minimal girth to the caver and works well with a chest harness to facilitate a range of ascending systems.
• A climbing harness will be somewhere between the two, with a front-waist attachment somewhere at or below belly-button level so that the body rotates around the center of gravity in the event of a lead-climbing fall.
• Industrial fall arrest harnesses have as their primary connection point a Dorsal D ring, for compliance with fall protection regulations, and a great deal of heavy metallic D rings for connection…
• and the list goes on.

So far we have addressed only a very limited range of features that are unique to each type of harness, but again I’m sure you get the idea.  I hope that you are also beginning to see that what is good for one application is, very specifically, often contraindicated for another.

So, depending on what the rescuer is doing, different types of rescue harnesses might be most appropriate.

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