Rescue professionals from across the globe recently met up in Los Angeles, CA on Battleship USS Iowa for GRIMP NA, an international rescue skills challenge hosted by CMC Pro. As rescue professionals, we truly enjoy participating in challenges that test our skills, and force us to step up our rescue game to a new level.
And GRIMP fit the bill. This is the first time in the event’s 14-year history that GRIMP was hosted in North America. And it pulled ten teams from across the globe to the competition, which consisted of five technical rope rescue and confined space scenarios over two days. Yep, two days of scenarios that we not only enjoy doing, but also enjoy training other rescue professionals to excel at. You could say we were a bit excited.
Our team was a combination of Elevated Safety and Harken professionals. Our team name, H-Elevated.
As with any team, everyone had their assigned roles:
- Nate Paulsberg, Navy veteran and Palatine Firefighter, was our fearless team leader.
- Joe Rogat, Harken Latin American Sales Manager, shared lead rescuer duties with Sean Cogan, Harken Sales Manager and rope access veteran.
- Ross Chapman, confined space guru, was the H-Elevated evaluator.
- Dale Abbinanti and Tom Wood were the team’s riggers.
- Bill Goggins, Harken CEO, served as our designated victim.
Our group of rescue professionals trained for several months, prepping for the skills competition, which was scored based on efficiency, safety and time to complete. When all elements were tallied up, we were beyond pleased to hear that team H-Elevated won first place!
We are proud to bring this award home, and can honestly say that the competition was strong, and we are walking away from the event better rescuers – which is always our goal.
Congrats to all teams that participated!
The Final Rankings
- 1st – H-Elevated (USA)
- 2nd – Special Rescue Association (Germany)
- 3rd – Namur FD (Belgium)
- 4th – Rescue Methods (USA)
- 5th – Exxonmobil – BRPP (USA)
- 6th- 49th Parallel Rescue Team (Canada)
- 7th- Las Vegas (USA)
- 8th- County of Los Angeles Fire Department (USA)
- 9th – CYRRT (Taiwan)
- 10th – Red Rock Training Group – Northwest Fire District (USA)