Jaws of Life Rescue
The "Jaws of Life" is a trademarked name, it was first developed by Hurst Performance while working in partnership with Zumro resQtec. The "Jaws of Life" are well named because they designed to and are most frequently used to snatch car wreck victims from the jaws of certain death.
The tool serves three different functions and does each of them far better than anything that was previously available to rescue personnel. The "Jaws of Life" is a cutter, a spreader and a ram. Though it is not an all in one tool they are, all three, referred to as "Jaws of Life." The cutter tool can open us a steel car roof or bumper or roll bar, the spreaders can force a mashed car door open and the ramming tool can ram a car dashboard back from a trapped victim. All this is done in short order without generating sparks, which would risk ignition of fuel form a damaged fuel tank. It achieves this with out extremely loud noise, that would further stress the accident victims. Both of these risk factors were present with previously used circular saws and other extraction tools.
The "Jaws of Life" was originally designed to use in auto racing where car wrecks are frequent and fuels are even more volatile then those used in street cars. The highly volatile fuel made sparks even more of a danger for both drivers and rescuers when they needed to cut the driver out of his wrecked race car.
The tool is operated drawing hydraulic oil pressure of up to 720 bar, it applies this hydraulic pressure, generated either from a gas powered engine, a powerful battery pack, or more recently a hand operated pump to move it's jaws; spreading, ramming or cutting it's way to free and extract the crash victims in short order.
The cutter is strong enough with it's pincer like, "crab cutter," blades to eat it's way through a steel roll bar, it's blades are curved to grip with their tips first before cutting. The spreader is able to stretch and spread the metal of a car door or roof open to allow for the rescue of a vehicle occupant . It is started by putting the closely placed tips of the appliance into a crevice, to pry open or pop off a car door or to peel back a crushed roof. The tips are then forced open spreading and bending the metal to pry the wrecked car open, allowing the victim to be removed.
The ram can force an engine block and dash board, back off of the lap or chest of a crushed front seat occupant in a crashed vehicle, freeing them for extraction and treatment. The exact number of victims that have been rescued thanks, at least in part to this tool, that would have otherwise died must be at least in the thousands since the inception of this tools use.
