At the Colorado State Fire Fighters Association’s 2025 Fire College, Chop Shop RX Instructors walk firefighters through how to effectively remove the sidewall/ perform a batwing.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:
I am gonna show you what this looks like with the team of two. We decide that this diagnosis is a front end impact. We needed to total sidewall room. I walk up vertical crush in the window over the latch, make contact, take my half a step, get my purchase. I walk around, I’m right here. Open the door. Call for the.
Cutters. Cutters. Place one blade in, cut open cutters, drop down, make a cut, come up, make another cut. Spreaders, they walk out here, they make their second cut. Spreaders are looking at the topography of their battlefield, getting their angles all correct. Then they step back, we send it doors all the way open, right?
Spreaders finish like this. Doors open. I stepped forward. I pull this off of that person’s lap, right? Cutters. Cutters come in. Double cut the A post cut, cut, cut, cut. Door falls off. Spreaders, expander, put cutters. See how that works. That’s fluidity emotion. We don’t remove roofs. We do the roof raise for access.
When possible, if I was going to remove this roof. And I just had one person on scene with me. I cut high above the patient right here. My partner cuts low everywhere else. Once all the cuts are made, my partner is diagonal from me. I’m right here on the high cut. My partner’s back there on three. We lift up, he drops his C post off the side of the car, and that levers my end up.
And I move it back to the headrest or behind. We do that a couple times and then we throw it over there ’cause we can’t effectively do this and twinkle to across the scene to get it off. That’s how you would remove a roof with minimal personnel.
* The training views expressed in this video are those of the training instructors, and not Fire Spotlight. The actions in this video are inherently dangerous and could result in death; should the viewers choose to adopt any views expressed in this video, he/she is doing so at his/her own risk. Fire Spotlight encourages viewers to review his/her department’s Standard Operating Procedures when adopting any new training views.