BEYOND THE “POINT OF ATTACK”
BILL MANNING
While it`s natural to focus firefighter safety efforts at the “point of attack”–on operational behaviors and methodologies–the fire service often has trouble seeing the big safety picture. Yet the pursuit of firefighter safety, realized through a reduction of line-of-duty injury and death rates, must be a holistic effort.
Political activism is part of that holistic effort, but it is a part we`re too ready to neglect. Many of us enjoy thinking of ourselves as above the political fray. That is a grave self-deception.
One need only look at the status of the F.I.R.E. Act–United States Congressman Bill Pascrell`s effort to infuse local fire departments with much-needed federal dollars that could significantly improve firefighter safety–to understand that political power eludes the fire service. Currently the bill is in congressional purgatory, stalled in committee. There it will sit unless the fire service makes a unified, clear-cut case for why such federal outlays are important to our firefighters and communities. Without political energy, the bill will die by this time next year. The clock is ticking.
But political vigilance is required on many fronts. State and federal bureaucracies, ever eager to brandish the broad sword of the unfunded mandate, bear close scrutiny in particular.
Take a recent case involving the U.S. Department of Transportation. On October 30, 1998, the DOT issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on new regulations governing the transport of compressed gas (high-pressure) cylinders (Hazardous Materials: Requirement for DOT Specification Cylinders; Docket No. RSPA-98-3684 [HM 220]). The regulations address issues of cylinder construction, maintenance, testing, repair, and safety, among others, with the overall intent of “enhancing the transportation of hazardous materials in cylinders,” according to the DOT`s Research and Special Projects Administration, which oversees the haz-mat transportation rules.
The RSPA targeted January 1999 for finalizing its new rules, but a proliferation of comments from the cylinder industry necessitated an extension of the comment period to September 30. Why is this important? Because if the new regulations had been finalized in January, a large hammer would have fallen on the fire service. We would not have seen it coming. No one from the fire service community noticed the hammer until almost six months after the ruling was supposed to go into effect.
Call it a bureaucratic gaffe. Or a simple mistake. Whatever. The fact that a bureaucracy cannot possibly account for all the consequences wrought by its well-intentioned, sweeping laws makes “final rules” all the more frustrating.
The DOT, in its haste to satisfy the Compressed Gas Association, forgot that breathing air cylinders used by the fire service fall under its domain. Its proposed ruling:
mandates that aluminum and composite cylinders exposed to a temperature of 350°F must be condemned–as in discarded. Not only will this place a severe financial burden on fire departments and municipalities (the New York City Fire Department estimates that complying with this item alone will cost the city $85 million per year), but consider the consequences for departments that can`t muster a sufficient number of SCBA for firefighting operations;
requires that cylinders be marked with their test pressures, not their service (working) pressures as is currently required. For a fire service accustomed to refilling air bottles to the pressure marked on the cylinder, the potential for and consequences of air bottles filled to 6,000 or 8,000 psi is frightening;
no longer requires internal inspection for requalification of steel and aluminum cylinders. A proven means for detecting cylinder defects will thereby be removed;
mandates that ultrasonic testing replace the current performance-based hydrostatic test procedures for steel and aluminum cylinders. This will add to the cost of testing SCBA and eliminate what industry sources say is the only true, reliable test for ensuring that these types of air cylinders will perform safely in real-world conditions. For example, ultrasonic testing cannot detect annealing of aluminum cylinders that can occur from use in heated environments;
increases cylinder burst disc activation pressure (the point at which the SCBA pressure relief valve is activated). While this rule is designed to better prevent accidental releases of hazardous gases, it compromises the safety of firefighters operating in heated atmospheres (in which heat expands the gas, and therefore the pressure, in the air bottle). The rule also drives up the cost of SCBA bottles because it requires new burst discs and retesting;
replaces the U.S./British system of measurement (pounds per square inch) with the metric system (bars).
Fortunately, in late May of this year, Mine Safety Appliances Company (MSA), the SCBA manufacturer, reacted to this problematic situation, bringing its concerns forward to DOT and, in doing so, alerting the fire service to rules that would jeopardize firefighter safety and cause extreme financial hardship. The International Association of Fire Chiefs, National Fire Protection Association, National Volunteer Fire Council, and numerous organizations and individuals throughout the fire service submitted comments to the DOT.
Will the fire service receive an exemption to this onerous ruling? DOT spokespersons would not comment on the outcome. “I can say,” offered one bureaucrat, “that it was not the Agency`s intention to replace composite breathing apparatus after every fire.”
Of course not. And it would be hard to believe that the fire service would not be exempted from a law that would be so damaging to the entire industry.
But the case is clear: Political institutions, federal and state bureaucracies, city councils, and so forth exist to make laws–it`s what they do. Their gravitational pull is strong. The fire service cannot help but be pulled into their orbit. Federal bureaucracies, in particular, have an appetite for directly regulating or otherwise indirectly affecting fire service operations, especially in the name of “workplace safety.” Knowledge of firefighting practices is not a prerequisite for enacting a federal regulation.
Even the most well-intentioned law can have “unforeseen,” far-reaching effects on the fire service. Our duty to protect ourselves and promote firefighter safety demands a holistic effort that sometimes will take us far beyond the point of attack into the bizarre world of laws and politics.
