poping a door with an air bag in the door

[Hammerhead338]

Hi all, I have a question for everyone. On page 35 in the May 2001 copy of Fire House, they show a door with a air bag in the door.
My question is if I have to remove the door to get the pt out how can it be done safely with out taking a chance of it going off.

Have a good day

Joe

[j. schmidt]

Good question hammerhead! I read the same article and thought the same thing. Obviously you would have already secured the power to the battery. I have heard of fire departments placing "hard protection" between the patient and the uninflated airbag. By "hard protection" I have seen that some rescue companies carry ordinary street signs with holes cut in them for handles to carry around. I myself have never done this nor have I ran into something like this. Some problems I have heard from doing this is that you have to commit another man or two to hold the sign and they have to really hold it well so if the airbag does go off the sign doesn't go flying into the patient. Another problem is they take up a lot of space on the truck, and in my department we have a pumper/rescue with 200lbs. of crap on it, that was only designed to hold 5lbs. I don't know if this helps you maybe Ron Moore has some other ideas.

[ejfd30]

Well you guys have a Good Question, I have not had the opportunity to see this on the road yet, But I think my First reaction is not to place anything between the PT and the Bag. The last thing a person needs to be hit with a street sign or a half board (that what we have for hard protection) after they have been injured. My feeling would be, Pop the door then take the door OFF. If the Door is out in the pucker brush who cares if it goes POP. But I feel putting ANYTHING between the PT and the Bag is a BAD BAD BAD idea. By the way, we use the "Hard Protection" next to a PT when we are cutting so as not to injure the pt .

[Hammerhead338]

ejfd30, would you go after the hinges first of the nader bolt first. My biggest worry is when you spread open the door you are putting stress on the door and the air bag, and could it set it off accidently go off.

Have a good day and be safe.

Joe

[bambam29]

Originally posted by Hammerhead338:
ejfd30, would you go after the hinges first of the nader bolt first. My biggest worry is when you spread open the door you are putting stress on the door and the air bag, and could it set it off accidently go off.

Have a good day and be safe.

Joe

Why Not just Leave the Door if Possible and take off the roof or out the back door.

[Rescuespike]

Just an idea here. Why not use a chisel or a cip saw to cut the hinges and the nadar instead of putting undue force on the door with the spreader.

Chris Schultz
Mountain Ambulance Service www.rescue70.org

[Joerg Heck]

Hi all!

I'm a volunteer firefighter form Germany, this is my first posting in this forum. I'm sorry my english is not very good, I hope you could unterstand what I mean.

Over here in Germany there are many cars with door-mounted side-airbags (BMW, Mercedes-Benz). Because there has not been many airbag-incidents yet, I thinks (and there are also statements of some car-manufactures) that the chance of an accidental airbag-deployment is not very big, but it is possible.

That's why I think we should not delay patient extrication because we are afraid of removing a door with an airbag. Popping doors are very important actions in many motor vehicle accidents and we could not let it be. It's no solution to remove the rear door because many cars with door-mounted airbags have these bags in every door. For your information, the car with the most airbags here in Germany is the bmw 7er, it has got 10 airbags, 2 frontal, 4 side-airbags in the doors, hps-bags for both front passengers and head-airbags for the rear passengers.

Airbags could be dangerous, but there are a few rules which could minimize the risk.

Why should an airbag deploy accidentally? I don't think it would go off only because we are putting stress on the door. It could go off when the vehicle battery is still intact and when we use the airbag-controller as an anchor-point for our rescue tools, when there is a spark in cabels due to cutting them or when we trigger a mechanical sensor with our tools (Volvo SIPS). A door mounted airbag could also go off because when there is great heat (if you try to remove the collision-beams in the door with a k12).

I think it's important to follow these rules:
*Turn of the ignition, disconnect the battery
*Do not place any hard-board protection between an undeployed airbag and the patient (do not place anything in the deployment path).
*Maintain a proper safety distance.
*Do not use anything which could make extreme heat on a door with a side-airbag
*If you remove the door it's important that it only moves away from the patient (for example when using the spreader at the hinges). Use the right technique.

Be free to correct me when I said something wrong or if you don't understand what I mean.

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Jorg Heck
Airbag&Co, Germany/Austria http://airbag.feuerwehr.org

[ejfd30]

I like our new German friends thought, DO NOT PUT ANYTHING BETWEEN AIR BAG AND PT. Some thoughts for you, 1) How many MVA'S lead to a carfire, from what I have heard it is less then 2%, OK MVA, Hose line in place, but do your rescue and emt folks have on air packs, NO, Nore do they need to. We are aware that there is a possability of fire, and that they may have to get out of there, but probably not. With that said, 2) number of times a air bag will deploy while we are doing extrication, From what I have heard less then 1%, so what do we do, Know that the air bag is there, be mindfull of it, stay clear of it, But we still must do our job that we came to do. If we have tricks of the trade so that we will reduce the liklyhood of making the air bag go POP, then we do them. But other then the few simple rules above, I think we need to just do it.

[sledgehammer]

I like everyones reply to this question. As we all know the first rule of airbage safety is DO NOT PLACE ANYTHING BETWEEN AN UNDEPLOYED AIRBAG AND A PT. If an airbag is going to deploy the very last thing you want to do is provide a projectile for your pt. Think about side airbags first of all. How far out do they deploy-about five or so inches. You need to get the airbag as far away from the pt as possible. In my department, if we have this scenerio we start to remove the door from the hinge side right under the A post. This starts putting inches between your pt and the bag. At the same time we make a horizontal cut as high as possible on the B post. When you continue to remove the door from the A post you can get alot of distance between the bag and your pt. If the airbag does deploy you should have enough distance between the bag and your pt that all it is going to do is make a big noise. Remember to make the cut on the B post as high as possible. I hope this helps.

[Firemt47]

Hannerhead,

The air bags in vechiels has given us a lot to think about.

Jennifer

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Firemt47
"FIRST IN; LAST OUT"

[Firemt47]

Hannerhead,

The air bags in vechiels has given us a lot to think about.

Jennifer

------------------
Firemt47
"FIRST IN; LAST OUT"

[j. schmidt]

I posted the original answer. I see that you all agree that you should not be placing anything between the patient and the airbag. I would also have to agree with this and my department doesn't do the placing of "hard protection." But there are departments out there that do that and I have read articles about doing this. I see that Hammerhead was saying about attacking the A post to spread the door away from the patient. I defiantly agree with this. Here is another idea that might work if you have a 4 door car. How about a door flap?

[resq39]

I believe the safest way is to work from the hinge side. You are starting to see how important this could be to be able to cut hinges and nator bolts. I always teach to use the spreader to make some room to get yor cutter in place and cut the hinges. Then move to the nator side and remove door from latch assembly. All this can be done from the outside of the door so as not to get in the "strike zone" of the bag . Hope this helps.Always be aware of airbags but not scared of them.

[Kevin Gill]

I think many of the above ideas are great. The patient and your safety are always #1. I suggest removing the door starting at the hinges as well, avoiding pressure on the B post. Many times the door latch is all that is holding on the Nader bolt, and simply releasing the latch with a wedge will remove the rest of the door. Folding the whole side down is also an option, or you may want to leave the doors intact and simply remove the roof and perform a vertical extrication. Remember when cutting the B post to go high, even using a pie cut on the roof itself to seperate the B post from the roof. This will avoid air bags and seatbelt pretensioners.
The best thing to do is get a rescuer inside to locate air bags, etc, including removing plastic trim inside to ease this. Be safe all!