concerning an identified batch of 7 ropes.

Stop using it and contact BealPMI Customer Service for a free replacement.

The following serial numbers, which can be found on the rope label and on the packaging, are affected by this recall:

004A01235824

005A01235824

006A01235824

007A01235824

009A01235824

012A01235824

014A01235824

What to do if you own one of these 7 ropes?

1. Immediately discontinue all use.

2. Check the serial number on the label: If it matches one of the numbers above, your product is

affected.

3. Contact our Customer Service to arrange a free return and replacement.

Products not affected

All other batches of the Beal Sunrise 9.2MM 50M rope as well as all other models in the SUNRISE range are not affected by this recall and remain fully compliant with the current safety requirements.

BealPMI customer service contact

care@bealpmi.com

  800-282-7673

This notice must be displayed until the end of the recall

Please share this information widely

Earlier this year, PMI released a blog post talking about NFPA 2500 – what it is, what it might mean to you, and how to use it. If you want to review that information, you can find it on our website, at www.pmirope.com.

One of the things we talked about in that post was the release date of the NFPA 2500 document and just how long it might be before you actually see gear being marked to the new standard.

Today I am here to let you know about an important update to NFPA 2500; but if you haven’t reviewed the original post you might want to check that out too.

There are more than 30 people who are part of the NFPA Special Operations Protective Clothing and Equipment Committee that oversees NFPA 2500.  The people who sit on this committee are not just manufacturers, but also represent test labs, fire departments, training companies, rescue teams, and more.  NFPA standards development processes are compliant with ANSI protocol, and prevent any one interest group from becoming a majority. This may come as a surprise to some who might believe that standards are written by and for manufacturers themselves.

The NFPA 2500 standard combines what used to be three separate documents… NFPA 1983 (which was equipment focused); NFPA 1858 (which provided selection use and care information) and NFPA 1670 (which outlines team competency for Technical Rescue.) Now, the substance of all three of those documents is contained in just one standard.

This is important, because if you are a fire department you might be accustomed to looking for markings on your equipment that say NFPA 1983, along with some year-reference.

But pretty soon the equipment you’re used to seeing with these markings is going to be marked NFPA 2500, with (1983) in parenthesis, and then the effective year – in this case, 2022. This standard is updated once every five years, so it will be awhile before that effective date is changed again.

Here’s where the new information comes in.  In our previous post, we talked about the fact that the standard was released in 2021, with a 2022 effective date, and we talked about how manufacturers were given a deadline of September 2022 to get all their gear re-tested and re-marked to the new standard.

However, earlier this year NFPA released a Tentative Interim Amendment (TIA), extending that deadline for an additional six months, due to administrative delays.

As a result of this change, marking to the new NFPA 2500 (1983) 2022 standard, which was released all the way back in 2021, is actually not required until early 2023!

Please keep in mind that there is no limit on when you have to stop buying or using equipment that is marked to older versions of the NFPA 1983 standard; in fact, most of the provisions and requirements for equipment testing have not really changed.  There are no NFPA requirements to stop using certain equipment, there are no particular hazards or concerns associated with continuing to use gear marked to a previous version of the NFPA standards. Their only rule is that as of Spring 2023 MANUFACTURERS have to stop selling equipment marked to the 2017 edition of 1983.

Stay vertical, and keep on climbing with PMI!

”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.

>> Read Next Part

Here at PMI we are committed to safety and compliance in equipment for work at height. In fact, we participate in several professional standards development efforts related to ropes, equipment, and training for high angle work and rescue.

In 1992 I was operating a research and testing lab called Alpine Center for Rescue Studies when Steve Hudson approached me and asked if I would represent PMI to the NFPA 1983 committee. Since then I have participated in this and several other NFPA committees including as chairman of NFPA 1958 and as an inaugural member of NFPA 1670.

Those of you who use, or are subject to, NFPA standards for rescue equipment, operations, and training should be aware of some upcoming changes to the NFPA standards that may impact your world.

—Watch the video or keep reading—

“Familiar documents”

A meeting was recently held to discuss the first draft of what will become an NFPA Consolidated Technical Rescue document, soon to be known as NFPA 2500. The official title of NFPA 2500 is: Standards for Operations and Training for Technical Search and Rescue Incidents and Life Safety Rope and Equipment for Emergency Services. Don’t let the fancy title throw you, though. This NFPA 2500 is nothing more than a bundled package containing three documents with which you are probably already familiar:

NFPA 1983 – Standard on Life Safety Rope and Equipment for Emergency Services

NFPA 1858 – Standard on Selection, Care, and Maintenance of Life Safety Rope and Equipment for Emergency Services

And

NFPA 1670 – Standard on Operations and Training for Technical Search and Rescue Incidents

The first, most obvious question is WHY is NFPA doing this?!

“NFPA 2500 is nothing more than a bundled package”

NFPA’s theory in all of this is simple. They want to make the standards more user-friendly while at the same time making them less expensive and time consuming to develop. According to the NFPA website, they’ve got over 250 committees managing more than three hundred standards documents…  with requests on the table for at least a hundred more! By bundling like-documents related PPE and Pro Qual, they’ll be taking 116 separate documents and consolidating them down to 48 –  theoretically reducing the time investment and travel for meeting required by the more than 9,000 committee members who write them.

In implementing these changes, NFPA has acknowledged that there are two things firefighters hate:

1. change, and
2. when things stay the same.

So, with this in mind, they are going to accommodate all of us:

First, by changing the way the standards are packaged, and

Second, by keeping the existing reference numbers the same,

so if someone wants to implement just one of the standards in a group you can still do that.

“Combination of the three”

Chapter 1 of the new NFPA 2500 will be kind of an umbrella, outlining the scope of the entire document.  In chapter 1,  each of the existing standards: NFPA 1983, NFPA 1858, and NFPA 1670, will still be called out and identified by name, so your AHJ will be able to continue to adopt whatever it is you already use without having to change any terminology or numerical references. You can choose to adopt just NFPA 1983, just NFPA 1858,  just NFPA 1670, or some combination of the three.

“The meat of the document begins”

The way the new NFPA 2500 is organized you’ll find Chapters 1-3 just to be administrative oversite information. The new chapter 1 is just that high-level overview we talked about, explaining how the documents are bundled. Chapter 2 is nothing more than a list of references – same as it is now – and Chapter 3 is definitions. Then the meat of the document begins. Chapters 4-23 will be the content that you presently know as NFPA 1670.  It will still be called NFPA 1670, so if you presently use 1670 for Training and Operations you will still be able to do that. Chapters 24-28 will be the content that you presently know as NFPA 1983. Again, it will still carry the numerical designator NFPA 1983, so the equipment you’re buying will still have that reference number on it.

And, finally, Chapters 29-35 will be the content that you presently know as NFPA 1858.

“NFPA 1858 just released a year or so ago”

You might not even be familiar with this 1858 document yet, because it was just released a couple of years ago. It is designed to provide guidance for Selection, Care and Maintenance of NFPA 1983 Rope Rescue Equipment.

After this, you will find all of the Annexes and Reference Materials for all three of these documents.

Now, there’s just one thing we want to add, and that is: DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER!!!

Rest assured, this was not PMI’s idea! Although Loui McCurley from PMI has sat on the committee for more than 20 years, she is just one of many members. This action was mandated by the NFPA, not chosen by the committee… so committee members are just doing the best they can to try to catch NFPA’s VISION for this and carry it out in time for a GOOD standard to be produced in 2020. Although we didn’t create it, PMI is – as always – going to do our level best to walk with you, support you, and assist you in navigating this change with as little impact as possible on your organization.

We’d love to hear your comments and questions here, and will try to answer any specific questions you might have along the way.

Presenter: Loui McCurley | Webinar | This presentation will outline recent updates to the recent OSHA Fall Protection Regulation as well as developments within the ANSI Z359 family of Fall Protection standards as relates to rope access. Presented by PMI’s Loui McCurley, who has been blazing new trails in safe work at height for over three decades, this is a command performance update to her presentation at the January 2017 SPRAT conference. From working as a Rope Access Technician before such a thing existed in the USA, Loui visualized and instigated the founding of the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians (SPRAT) in 1996, then went on to help develop a pair of groundbreaking global rope access standards with the International Standards Organization (ISO) in 2003. Ten years later, she worked tirelessly with OSHA to ensure allowances were made for rope access in the impending 2016 updates to their 29CFR 1910 Subpart D Walking Working Surfaces regulation, and recently released the first book of it’s kind on Professional Rope Access for Safety Professionals and Program Managers. Today, in addition to serving as Regulatory Assistance Chairman of SPRAT, Loui is once again leading a charge for the cause as chairman of the ANSI Z359 Committee’s forthcoming standard on Rope Access. Loui’s commitment and passion to improving safety in work at height is recognized by regulatory authorities, standards organizations, and corporate safety professionals worldwide. You’ll get the latest critical updates and insights toward future efforts in this presentation.

Presenter: Steve Hudson | Webinar | 
The 2012 edition of NFPA 1983 Standard on Life Safety Rope and Equipment for Emergency Services is out! All manufacturers of these products will soon be required to certify their products to this new version of NFPA 1983. This webinar is a quick review of the major product additions and other changes to the previous edition published in 2006. Steve Hudson has been actively involved with the NFPA Technical Committee responsible for the creation of this and the previous four editions of NFPA 1983.

Presenter: Loui McCurley | Webinar | 
The Rope Access Permit (Work Plan) referenced by SPRAT Safe Practices documents is intended as a tool for the employer/safety manager to use in evaluating the work to be done and to ensure that all necessary considerations have been given the attention they deserve. The Rope Access Permit is more than just a Job Hazard Analysis; it is a comprehensive guideline to help think through practical safety and regulatory aspects of a given job. Attend this free webinar to learn more about how to plan your rope access work using the “Permit-Process”.