With the development of new vehicle technology and harder metals, we are constantly looking at new ideas and equipment to make our job a little easier and more effective.
The use of angle grinders and disc cutters are being looked at and trialled for the use at RTC's but the mixed feelings as to their suitability is still open for debate, due to the high level of noise, sparks and control of the tool in confined spaces. These tools have been used for heavy rescue and USAR operations for many years with very positive results.
The tool we have been evaluating is the new Twin Saw from Weber Rescue UK. Its basically a circular saw with two blades that rotate in opposite directions.
This is the Twin Saw, as you can see it is an electrically powered saw running on either 240v or 110v.
Here you can see the two blades, these rotate in opposite directions which greatly reduces kick back on initial tool use and reduces the amount of sparks created.
Having used this saw for the first time i was very impressed with its ease of use, there is very little kick back from the saw, reducing the risk of causing injury to yourself and other rescuers.
The reduction in spark's compared to a disc cutter is huge, with very little spark's being created, there is also a small amount of flying debris from small shards of metal.
That being said with the correct use of PPE and casualty protection there would be a minimal risk.
The saw was able to cut through the vehicle with easy, we even tried it on the Mercedes B-post that we used on the reciprocating saw blade tests.
As you can see here it managed to cut not only through the B-post but also the seatbelt bracket at the same time. Due to a technical fault we had to leave the cut incomplete, we will hopefully finish this part of the demo at a later date, the technical fault was not due to the saw. the cut we made was 2/3 of the way through the post.
In conclusion i found this to be a very useful piece of rescue equipment, it certainly will have its place at a car crash scene, especially for the cuts where our other tools fail.
I know there will be a lot of debate as to the suitability of this tool at vehicle crash rescues, so please send in your thoughts and ideas and i will post them.