How to reduce intervention time of rescue services by more than 50%

Introduction

One of the main tasks of Health and Safety professionals is to anticipate the most scenarios possible to implement the best organization.

Most of these different scenarios focus on the machines, method-statements and training of our companies and contractors.



Approach

Nevertheless, 2 factors are generally not taken into account for rescue organization, but both are very important in contributing to the reduction of intervention time in the case of accidents:

-The presence of other wind farms in the vicinity
-The abilities of external rescuers for intervention in the turbines.



Main body of abstract

A technician working for a maintenance contractor had a serious accident on a French site, where RES is the asset operator.

This site is located at the border of three counties – meaning 3 different emergency call centres – and close to three other existing wind farms.

Due to the configuration, it took more than 2 hours 30 minutes to rescue the injured technician. This period could have been longer if the injured technician had not been able to exit the turbine, using the ladder helped by his colleague, then luckily met by rescuers at the roadside. This long and unanticipated period was unacceptable for RES.

With the help of the maintenance contractor, other wind farm owners and local rescuers, we have been able to reduce the intervention time.

Intervention time was reduced by more than 50% during the next exercise thanks to better coordination, good identification, communication and training tools

How ?
• All turbines were renamed with a letter (+number) related to their wind farm making them unique on the plateau instead of having two turbines called L1 for example;
• Orientation map and panels were created and installed at each road crossing on the plateau;
• Precise coordination messages were defined with the different emergency call centres to be sure they forwarded the emergency call to the correct location;
• Ladders similar to the ones in wind turbines, equipped with all climbing PPEs have been installed in the fire stations
Since its success 3 years ago, this procedure has now become standard practice for RES in France, in all counties, with:

• Meeting with external rescuer teams at the first stage of construction sites to identify access roads, check GPS coordinates on site, define muster points…
• Annual meeting with external rescue teams for all operating sites, in order to review any changes on the machines or policies, to review the local fire service policy, to identify all causes of accidents to ensure that all means are available including helicopter…
• Review approach of wind turbines by helicopter;
• Specific training for wind turbines including potential installation of ladders in fire stations;
• Standard identification of turbines when several wind farms are close to each others;
• Orientation panels at road or path crossings;
• Onsite exercises (emergency call to the final rescue). The aim of these exercises is to assure that in the case of a real intervention, it would be appropriately managed in a prompt and timely manner.


Conclusion

This approach has been recognized as outstanding by rescue services in several French regions.
Also, recent feedback from the rescue services has proved that this approach has helped their interventions on other wind farms (not operated by RES) as they were fully trained for access and evacuation from the nacelle.
As a conclusion, as always in safety, the hours spent in preparation WILL save precious minutes and save lives.




Learning objectives
This simple approach shows us that with quite simple and economical tools but also good coordination, an incident will remain an incident and will not have a dramatic issue.