Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Forsaken Firefighter on May 7, 2010 at 4:12pm

My Lt. says "there is not a wire left in the car when I get done" lol

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on May 7, 2010 at 4:28pm

If the airbag(s) deployed, there's usually significant enough damage to the front end that access to the engine compartment may be obstructed, so cutting the cables is usually required and we'll tape off the ends to make sure they don't accidentally make a connection. If taping isn't possible then we'll double cut and take a piece out of one of the cables.

On the other hand, if it's a mild fender bender and we want to just safe up the scene, we'll disconnect the cables at the battery and remove them from the posts, taping them as well to prevent accidental contact. The point here being that we want to minimize the damage to the car as much as possible, in a "customer service" kind of way.

The above being said, we'll only cut the minimum necessary to make the vehicle safe so usually we leave essentially all of the wiring in the car. But hey, that's just how we do it.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on May 7, 2010 at 4:50pm

When we cut or disconnect the cables we try to tuck them into a loom or something where they can't reconnect on their own.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on May 7, 2010 at 8:25pm

Most of the time it's just as easy to disconnect the cables in case you need to power up an electric seat or roll down electric windows later in the incident.

It's easy to tape up the terminals - it takes about 10 seconds - time well spent.

If you're going to cut the cables, roll down the power windows and move the electric seats as far back as possible before cutting the cables.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Tony P on May 8, 2010 at 4:20am

We disconnect when at all possible.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Paul Montpetit on May 8, 2010 at 5:30am

double cut them.....at any MVA with significant damage......remove the ignition hazard....

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by ashfire on May 8, 2010 at 10:00am

I would say double cutting would be right. We had a car fire one time and either single cut or disconnected the cables. After we got back to the station we got another car fire up the street from where the other fire had been.
You guessed it, the driver reconnected the cables and drove the car home and it caught fire again in front of his house.

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion