Our rivers, lakes and oceans provide opportunities for work and recreation – but they are also potentially dangerous places and it is vital that rescue crews are well skilled in performing rescues on the water.
At Ruth Lee we have worked with water rescue teams in the RNLI, Navy and coastguard agencies across the world to develop a full range of water rescue manikins.
Our Surf Rescue manikin (formerly named the Conscious Casualty Manikin) was developed with the co-operation of Surf Life Saving Australia as a water rescue dummy for IRB Racing, IRB driver training and Tube Rescue practice.
In the UK, we were pleased to receive feedback on manikins we supplied to Hayle Surf Life Saving Club in Cornwall.
Neil Butler, IRB Officer at Hayle Surf Life Saving Club said,
“We use the Surf Rescue manikin on almost every training session.
It is perfect for just bobbing around in the surf and also tight against the rocks. The main advantage of using dummies is that we’re not putting any patients at risk in dangerous situations. They can also be deployed some time before our operations secretly, and then used in our search and rescue training.
We also use them to practice racing. Constant pick ups on live patients can cause potential injury including bruising over a two hour training session, so using the dummy allows us to constantly keep practicing pick ups without the risk of injury. There is obviously no risk of injury to the manikin when we are practising driving flat out towards it in race training.
We also have a Man Overboard manikin and we use this for slow patient handling in more controlled environments. Due to its weight it’s a lot more difficult to retrieve from the sea.
It is great for retrieving from rocks and situations where the boat cannot access, such as where the rescuer leaves the boat using a rescue tube and swims to the manakin, attaches the tube and swims back to the boat.
We also use it in our search and rescue ops where it can be hidden in coves and hidden amongst the rocks and also hidden between boats in the harbour.
As you can see from the below video, our Flood Rescue Team can use the manikins for training in fast water and around sluice gates.”
Find out more about Hayle Surf Life Saving Club