Tough 4 day weekend for us as we barely got out of a valley with nasty rock ledges on both sides, then were given keys of a H2 hummer with instructions to test it throughly , then did a big end on a new 450 injected trail bike but before all this we came across this rather shaken up driver just after the police found him with his Troppy an inch from a rollover and potential serious consequences.
The question I would like to ask is how would you rescue him , or would you ?
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First, the scene on the road to Wren's flat south of Jamieson in Victoria.
A large tree (1 meter diamemter) was down across the road blocking it and end of the tree went over a very steep
embankment.
The driver attempted to drive over the tree , got his front
wheels over and then the back hit and the rear end slid on the bark and went over the road edge and it almost rolled but was just caught by another part of the tree.
What the picture doesn't show is that the tree was broken in two near the embankemt but was not severed (important) the broken section over the
embankment was facing forward such that the tree formed an L shape , as the car began to rollover, the back of the car rotated into the tree with the back wheel hitting it stopping the roll and suspending the cars rear above the ground with the back wheel pressed against the tree.
The key point in this situation was that cutting out the tree section on the road way would release the section hanging over the edge and it would drop taking the car with it.
We arrived a few minutes later to find the driver and police from a 3lt Nissan patrol discussing and deciding that the troppy could not be rescued by a standard winch pull as this would pull the car forward away from the part of the tree that was supporting it and it would roll a long way down the steep slope.
They decided that the solution was to get in a heavy haulage winch truck and with use of two
winches attached to trees on the opposite bank, to pull the car fully broadside onto the road proper. Then cut out the tree from under it.
The police officer, must have been in these situations before, he said
that the tow truck would take some hours and then pulled out a little griller
placed it in the centre of the road, light a small fire, and proceeded to BBQ
some sausages.
We though we knew a short cut around this
road block and weren't going to wait so we headed off on our own ill-fated expedition.
I thought about how I would recover the car using just the cars winch and stuff that you would normally carry.
I figured the problem was you could not pull along the road as a roll would occur and I agreed you needed to pull sideways but the road was to narrow to position a car such that you could pull the troppy away from the edge.
I would have wrapped my short winch strap around the huge trunk of the tree to the left of the picture and attached my small 40mm winch pulley there.
This would have enabled a pull along the length of the tree with the rope attached to the front of the Troppy which would have swung it around.
But would this rotation have been enough to allow the back end to drop on the ground such that it didn't roll ?
Would you have allowed my approach - or would you suggest a better way ?
(assuming the police and other facilites were not available of course , otherwise one would wait and eat some tax payer funded sausages).