Avalanche Safety Device tested

[jtwassoc]

......................

[jtwassoc]

'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

[jtwassoc]

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

[jtwassoc]

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[jtwassoc]

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

[jtwassoc]

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[jtwassoc]

she's goin' big........

[jtwassoc]

Code YELLOW......

[jtwassoc]

Drop your gear.....

[jtwassoc]

CODE RED....

[jtwassoc]

Run for your life.....

[berko]

This thread rules.

[Cirquerider]

Wow, deep snow, helicopters, expolsives, dummies high speed cameras and beer..good beer. I need to get a new job!

Very compelling argument for that safety device too, but the dummies need protection from the testers.

[jtwassoc]

Well.........we didn't set out to destroy perfectly good crash test dummies, but we think if you get caught in a class 3 avalanche you are going to be torn to pieces if you are a human or a dummy. We thought about putting the dummies lower on the hill, but a lot of victims get caught at the very top of the avalanche. Besides, if you are half way down the mountain and one of these big slides comes roaring down on you at over 100 miles an hour, pushing 100 metric tons of snow or more, you're finished.

As well, a couple of these 50 pound bombs went off extremely close to the dummies (3 feet away in the last test), tough on a crash test dummy. Now you might say to yourself, geez, why weren't these people more careful about the placement of the bombs? The trouble is the only way to get the charge into place is to drop it out of a helicopter, and sometimes the bomb hits the mountain and bounces all the way down to dummies, or even all the way down to the valley below. See pics below.......

[jtwassoc]

she's a runner......

[jtwassoc]

ahhhh.....chopper to valley film crew...come in, over......

[jtwassoc]

Incoming..........

[jtwassoc]

head for the hills......

[jtwassoc]

runaway bomb........

[jtwassoc]

boom.................................

[gonzo]

It has been said already, but I will say it again. This thread rules. I somehow just found this gem. I need to visit the slide zone more often!

I can't tell if this is spam or not and i don't care.

So who is paying for all of these bombs, helicopters, crash test dummies, and liquified CO2?

[jtwassoc]

.....these guys......


www.warisite.com

[gonzo]

so those three dudes/you are funding all of this themselves? were you financed? just curious where the money is coming from since you don't seem to sell anything yet.

[jtwassoc]

The project is funded by JTW Associates, an engineering lab in Lakeville, Minnesota. JTW sells inflatable water and ice rescue floating platforms to Sheriff, Fire, Police and Rescue Departments that respond to ice or water emergencies. Anyone responding to a water or ice emergency pulls a rip cord attached to a 20 cubic foot lift bag (the same lift bag used on the avalanche/snowmobile device). This allows the first responder to the scene to begin the rescue. The device is fairly small and is stored in the rescuers trunk or behind the seat of their pick-up truck. It holds a rescuer and two other adults above the waterline. It is also used by departments who use snowmobiles and ATVs to patrol frozen lakes and rivers, such as Forestry people, Natural Resources and Conservation officers, etc.

One of the engineers at JTW was reading a popular snowmobile web site and noticed the large number of avalanche/snowmobile deaths that were occuring. So they contacted several people in the avalanche business and put together snowmobile flotation tests in avalanches in Valdez, Alaska; LaMoille, Nevada and Revelstoke, British Columbia. The large lift bag easily brought the snowmobiles to the surface of the moving avalanches. The next step was to test a smaller human version of the device.

If everyone liked the frame by frame avalanche sequences we can run more. Test number two is pretty spectacular, and test number three is immense. It really went big. There's also a bunch of pretty decent control avalanches (to make it safe to go down in the valley and find the equipment).

[jtwassoc]

Here's the frame by frame sequence of avalanche test number two. You can see the avalanche hit the dummies, engulf them, and then cough them up for a second. This is also the test where one of the bombs got carried down the hill inside the avalanche and blew up in the valley......