At an emergency meeting, the UIAA Safety Commission has recommended anyone with a via ferrata set checks on the website of its manufacturer to see if it is the subject of a recall notice. Several manufacturers have initiated safety recalls in the last few weeks.
After a fatal accident in Austria, manufacturer Edelrid found that several models of via ferrata sets performed below the required standard after intensive use, and initiated a recall notice.
Stubai followed suit after discovering a similar problem with some of their sets, and it now appears that there may be a generic safety issue with certain types of set as other manufacturers including Singing Rock and AustriaAlpin follow suit. Wild Country have also now issued a recall, most recently followed by Mammut.
An emergency meeting of the UIAA Safety Commission and the European Committee for Standardisation was called to address this issue and decuided to review UIAA 128, the safety standard used to test via ferrata sets. The last review of this standard took place in 2008 when a wet test was added. The goal of the review is to update the existing standard for via ferrata sets that will include fatigue testing.
Read the press release from the UIAA
The BMC issues the following advice:
Check if any via ferrata sets you own are covered under a recall by going to the manufacturer's website.
A selection of individual manufacturer's recall pages are linked below, this list is not exhaustive:
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