Warning! Petzl zigzag

Hey guys I was just informed that the new mechanical prussik petzl zigzag failed at the working end where you connect a caribeaner. The guy fell from about 5 meters (15 or so feet, he's in the hospital but probably not feeling to good.

Here's the statement from sherrill tree
Just Received This E-mail From SherrillTree About Petzl Zig-Zag Failure - The Dripline

My coworkers have already removed them from their gear bags.
Stay safe!

Adamgaspo said:

Hey guys I was just informed that the new mechanical prussik petzl zigzag failed at the working end where you connect a caribeaner. The guy fell from about 5 meters (15 or so feet, he's in the hospital but probably not feeling to good.

Here's the statement from sherrill tree
Just Received This E-mail From SherrillTree About Petzl Zig-Zag Failure - The Dripline

My coworkers have already removed them from their gear bags.
Stay safe!

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Dang! Spider jack it is then!!!!

ya know i was looking at that at the TCI expo and wasnt feeling it was strong enough, but said to my self well, they test these things to make sure, but I still thought it was a little lacking in the structure department being we hang our selves on our gear. Im not much of a mechanical guy anyway but have incorporated some. Be careful .. Man that's not good. We trust our industry equipment makers such as Petzl to do more testing before we bring new stuff out for us to die on. :msp_mad:

opcorn:

That's why im staying old school, blake's with a split tail i like to keep it simple.

Thank you for the post. I will be keeping a close eye on this as I just purchased a ZZ. So far I think it is an excellent tool and I am a bit skeptical that the point mentioned could fail under normal use but hey who knows. Better safe than sorry thats for sure.

i wanna see my wraps...

Wow!

A) Positive vibes (for speedy/full recovery etc.) to the person that got hurt

B) Anyone who has one they don't trust?? - I'll buy it for $100 shipped to Vermont.

I've also sent an email to petzl and posted on their Facebook page as I have been reviewing the potential purchase of a zig zag....

From Petzl to me:
Yes we are aware of this and investigating. Here is our first statement “Petzl has recently become aware of an incident report involving the ZIGZAG mechanical Prusik.
According to a post on the treeclimber.eu message board, there is a claim that a connection point on the ZIGZAG broke, resulting in a ground fall.
Petzl has not yet confirmed the failure or seen the ZIGZAG in question, nor are we aware of the specific circumstances under which any such incident occurred. Therefore, we cannot comment on the report at this time.
That said, we would like to assure our customers that Petzl takes this and all safety issues extremely seriously. We are currently working diligently to collect information and will issue a statement as soon as we have had a chance to review the circumstances surrounding this reported incident.”

It will be interesting to see what actually happened. Too soon to condemn the product out of hand, but spooky nonetheless.

bonner1040 said:

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Holy crap!!! Was that a testto failure or was that while you were climbing?

That photo is from Treetools.co.nz 's facebook page. It is supposedly the ZZ unit that failed during the event in question.

bonner1040 said:

That photo is from Treetools.co.nz 's facebook page. It is supposedly the ZZ unit that failed during the event in question.

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Not good, very very not good. I come from a mqnufactyring background, and that is a total casting failure. Very scary.

There has been some doubt expressed as to the authenticity of that photo. As in whether it is the actual unit that resulted in a climber being injured, or a tensile strength destruction test.
Using a quickdraw loop for redundancy looks like an excellent idea until such time Petzl releases further information. A couple of photos are posted over on arb talk discussion board.

Any idea if he was using it Ddrt or SRT?

I'm considering buying a ZZ, very soon. The latest post by Petzl says that it will have its tests concluded by 4/23/13. I will hold off until the results are in. I've been climbing old school for longer than I can remember. I literally just did away with my Prusik, today, on my 2 in 1 lanyard, and went with a Rockgrab 90, single lanyard set-up. It immediately made a huge difference in my work speed and the ease with which I worked my climb. If doing away with my Blake's will speed things up even more, I am really looking forward to the ZZ. That assumes the photo in this thread was not the actual ZZ that failed. If it was, I'll pass, details of the failure notwithstanding.

Sunrise Guy said:

I'm considering buying a ZZ, very soon. The latest post by Petzl says that it will have its tests concluded by 4/23/13. I will hold off until the results are in. I've been climbing old school for longer than I can remember. I literally just did away with my Prusik, today, on my 2 in 1 lanyard, and went with a Rockgrab 90, single lanyard set-up. It immediately made a huge difference in my work speed and the ease with which I worked my climb. If doing away with my Blake's will speed things up even more, I am really looking forward to the ZZ. That assumes the photo in this thread was not the actual ZZ that failed. If it was, I'll pass, details of the failure notwithstanding.

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Hey sunrise, I'm in Georgetown right now, pm me if you want to try some different systems.

I've been looking at them thinking about buying one. Posted the? On the 101 forum. Thanks Jolly Logger for the heads up.