Many years ago I responded, as part of my fire department’s technical rescue team, to a confined space incident. The call was dispatched around noon on a Monday. I was a fire fighter, and one of the Technical Rescue Technicians on the responding crew. Our Fire Department is comprised of both full and paid on call staff and covers a response area of 318 square kilometers. This call was attended to by our full time crews. The initial response to the incident consisted of a four

Background A HIV and Hepatitis C positive arborist cut their brachial artery with a chainsaw 50’ up a tree that they had topped. As the arborist was attached via three lines to the tree (including a cable) the first in crews were unable to recover the body. As such, the Technical Rescue Unit (Tech Rescue) was dispatched. Tech Rescue was conducting recruit rescue training at the time of the incident and responded from the training, with recruits in tow, to the incident. Scene