EVERETT – A group of Everett firefighters looked more like mountain climbers Saturday as they got up close and personal with the newest equipment on the Everett waterfront – two container cargo cranes that tower 175 feet in the air.
The cranes, which will begin operation later this summer on the waterfront, pose a bit of a dilemma for the fire department. At the top, they’re a little higher than rescue workers can reach with their ladder and bucket trucks.
“The cranes are 30 years old,” the Port of Everett’s Greg Wells explained. “Any other crane would probably have an elevator. We have ladders. It’s a pretty precarious piece of equipment.”
Glen Martinsen, the fire department’s training captain, said the rescue practice went well Friday. Groups of firefighters climbed up to the operator’s cab, hauled up a metal-framed rescue stretcher used for mountain accidents and practiced securing a pretend victim.
“It gave all the guys a chance to do all the hands-on training with the technical knots,” Martinsen said.
The stretcher was secured with ropes, taken down to a lower platform that could be reached by the ladder and handed off to the bucket team.
Martinsen called the exercise a success because a large number of people got familiar with the cranes, their potential dangers and how to deal with them. He said a smaller group will go out another day to practice rescues that don’t involve any ladders.
“We didn’t actually send anybody down on one of our ropes,” he said. “We have a technical rescue team that has a lot of high-level, intense training in many disciplines. We’re prepared to do some climbing around like monkeys on the thing hands-on without machinery.”
The cranes, which were basically given to the Port of Everett by the Port of Seattle, were recently repainted and restored for $538,835. The sky blue paint is intended to make them blend in more with the skyline to be less obstructive to neighbors’ views.
They’ll soon be moved to the port’s Pacific Terminal, where they will be used to handle a strong increase in container cargo at the port. The move will begin in early August.
Herald writer Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459 or benbow@heraldnet.com.
Niki Desautels / The Herald
Travis Gramm (left) a rescue technician and paramedic, leads members of the Everett Fire Department in a rescue drill Friday from the top of a new Port of Everett crane.
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