UKC

Accident at the Westway Sports Centre climbing wall

An accident happened at the Westway Sports Centre climbing wall on the 15th of January involving a red-point auto-belayer made by the USA company, MSA Rose and a climber was injured.

This was the first accident involving the apparent failure of a red-point machine at the Westway. The climber fell 8m to the ground. Four witnesses said that the climber was correctly attached to the machine. The climber lost conciousness. On coming round he said that he could not understand what had happened as he had done everything properly.

The machine had been serviced and certified in accordance with the manufacturers instructions. The next certified service was due August 2007. The machine was visually checked on a daily basis for irregularities in the tapes, the running of the machine, and the action of the braking mechanism. The working mechanism can only be checked by the service engineers.

James Nichols from Enterprises UK (website), who distribute the red-point auto-belayer, has inspected the machine and found no visual and external abnormalities. It is now in the hands of the London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Environmental Health Department Office who will be conducting an investigation.

The machine appeared to work perfectly after the fall. Entreprises UK will make an official announcement after MSA Rose have reported back to them.

Some walls in the UK have retired their auto-belay machines until this official announcement has been made.

A thread was started at the Walls forum at UKClimbing.com. John Gibbons of the Westway Climbing Centre has issued an official statement there.

There is no detailed information on the condition of the climber involved. We are awaiting word of his condition and our thoughts are with him.


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17 Jan, 2007
semantics Wingman - semantics
18 Jan, 2007
Idle speculation: obviously autobelays are only safe for climbers within a certain weight range. Fasten a kitten to one and the poor bugger would be hurtled skywards, clip T Rex in and when it let go it'd crash to the ground. Elsewhere someone mentions this guy as climbing wearing a rack and rope (on another occasion) ... if this is correct then he's presumably in training. So.... he wasn't like, wearing a rucksack with a lot of weight in it, for example? And how big was he? And does anyone know the upper safety limit of human weight for autobelays? Also, does anyone know how the 'slickness' of autobelays is adjusted? I climbed on one that lowered me a lot faster than I'm used to the other day and we speculated it might have been recently serviced and adjusted. I hope the guy in question makes a full recovery very soon.
18 Jan, 2007
At Leeds the kit is labelled as ok to people upto 320lb i think... definitely over 300 anyway.
18 Jan, 2007
So even a huge guy with a huge backpack stuffed with gear should be fine. So stuff that theory. More idle speculation: if you're doing moves off line of teh tape you can fall off with quite a swing. Is there any chance that rather than a lowering failure this guy actually took a big swing, crashed into wall, hit head, was lowered normally but obviously stunned and in much pain? ie Did the witnesses see the tape unraveling fast, or did they only witness a thump and a screaming climber?
18 Jan, 2007
Ps And was so stunned he had no memory that that was how it happened... OK, not very likely...
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