many departments have some training in rope and rescue.

but as a navy veteran we have had a lot of training in rope and its multitude of uses.

aside from scheduled training we throw in a few surprise training quizzes and scenarios just to keep things interesting.

during one of the pumper practices we pulled a surprise rope rescue quiz where the juniors had to construct a tripod using rope and heavy branches to pull a "Victim" up out of a ravine. It went quite well, they took instruction well and quickly erected the tripod and placed a block and tackle in the rope collar and hoisted the "victim"(dummy on a backboard) gently out of the ravine.

the point is that anyone can command the scene for rope rescue if trained and if possible can perform a rope rescue solo, but we hammer the point home that it is a concerted effort that is in the best interest of the victims safety.

rope training should be second nature something you can do in your sleep(so to speak)

do not neglect training even for something you might not use very often.

there will come a time where you need to remember something you learned but its hard to remember things you were last trained on 20 or 30 years ago