US C-130’s have been flying in help for approximately the last 18 hours.
Since the last few earthquakes happened I’ve been thinking, why can’t we use helium for these remote rescues? You can’t save anybody with heavy equipment as is.
If we could just have huge helium balloons attached to a clamp claw with chains, we could clamp onto each piece of slab, inflated enough to lift it off the other pieces of slab once released by the crain and then swing each piece up enough to slide it up off the pile.
With a crain and chains, you can move one piece of fallen concrete at a time, but if you had 50 guys setting up 50 helium clamps at the same time on the pile, and three cranes, you could dig out quicker.
Hot-air balloons use about a 15:1 lift/mass ratio; you could achieve more lift with helium?