New tools for tearing wreckage apart to get trapped occupants out of mangled vehicles
These days, fire trucks are getting to be crammed so full of essential rescue gear that the nightmare scenario of arriving at the scene of a crash, only to find that the right equipment to get someone out of a car is not available, simply because there was no room for it onboard, is all too real.
“This is a global development initiative within IDEX that allows us to revolutionize how power is applied to rescue and make it easier for the user to save lives,”
Uwe Kirchner, President of IDEX Rescue.
People could die needlessly as a result of the sheer amount of space that these indispensable implements take up in the rescuers vehicles.
Tools for cutting and prying apart the twisted metal and plastic, known popularly as ‘the Jaws of Life’ (which is in fact the brand name of only one of several makes of such life-saving rescue devices) are typically extremely cumbersome and are also made even more unwieldy by the need to be connected to power by bulky cables.
With this seemingly insoluble problem in mind IDEX Corporation, who specialise in safety and rescue equipment, have come up with a technology which seriously reduces all of these shortcomings.
Their new eDRAULIC series of tools take up only half the space and weight and have a lithium-ion battery so that rescue workers are no longer hampered by the need to connect to power sources in inaccessible areas.
Here’s IDEX’s press release announcing the eDRAULIC range:
IDEX Rescue, a unit of IDEX Corporation, has launched this week the next generation of rescue tools. With the eDRAULIC series, IDEX Rescue frees rescue workers worldwide from hydraulic power units and hoses. The electro–hydraulic rescue tools match the hydraulic performance but now are completely portable units powered by high performance electro-mechanical technology.
The revolutionary eDRAULIC products require only half the space and weight compared to a conventional hydraulic set. With fire trucks often packed to the limits, rescuers are now able to take more lifesaving equipment to the rescue scene. With the lithium–ion energy source, the eDRAULIC tools become completely mobile and enable rescue far off-road or in large–scale accidents.
“This is a global development initiative within IDEX that allows us to revolutionize how power is applied to rescue and make it easier for the user to save lives,” explains Uwe Kirchner, President of IDEX Rescue.
The first eDRAULIC rescue tools will be supplied next month. The technology will be sold globally under IDEX’s Lukas and Hurst rescue brands.
For more information about this revolutionary product line, please visit Hurst, IDEX, Lucas or Jaws of Life.
