BY MICHAEL A. KREUGER
Today’s firefighter would not consider entering an IDLH (immediately dangerous to life or health) atmosphere without protective gear, including an NFPA-compliant self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). Yet, not too many years ago, most firefighters wanted nothing to do with such complicated, restrictive technology. Notoriously resistant to change, firefighters thought the attitude “we never did it that way before” was sufficient reason for not wanting to do it that way now.
But when I think back to when I first joined the Pittsburgh (PA) Fire Department in 1969, few of the members in their late 40s and early 50s who broke me in lived past the age of 70. Why? Because in those days, when you entered a burning building, you went from window to window, breaking out the glass and grabbing a breath of air. And for days after a big fire, you would cough and spit up black phlegm.
Fortunately, because of SCBA and the adoption of mandates to wear them, today’s firefighters should not have to face a similar fate. SCBA and other modern protective gear have not only made firefighting eminently safer, but they have even changed the way fires are fought, allowing firefighters to penetrate the fire more deeply.
But this brings its own set of risks: Equipment that can protect your life can also take it if that equipment is not performing properly.
 Photo courtesy of Survivair. |
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LEARNING THE HARD WAY
An incident in Pittsburgh cost the lives of three firefighters on Valentine’s Day in 1995. Two were friends of mine; the third was the son of a friend.
From what I’ve been told, it seemed like an ordinary house fire. The worst part of it was down in the second basement, which had just been winterized with PlexiglasT. As soon as the firefighters got there, one bad thing after another happened. Their radios didn’t work. The fire burned through the hose. And they couldn’t find a window because of the PlexiglasT. When their equipment came back, we found that their air cylinders were empty. They just ran out of air and died.
When the person in charge of maintenance quit two days later, I was given that responsibility. Our union requested that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) investigate the incident; the chief agreed. Part of this investigation included a total review of our SCBA program, including SCBA testing, maintenance, and record keeping. In addition, we tested the SCBA involved in the fatalities.
First, I went through the drawer that held the slips of paper we used for maintenance records. It was a nightmare, but we eventually found the records. They showed that the SCBA in question had, in fact, been maintained shortly before the incident.
However, when NIOSH tested the SCBA several months after the fire, the SCBA were putting out only about half the amount of air the manufacturer’s specification called for. This was very disturbing. Of course, the SCBA had been sitting around with water, vomit, and everything else in them, so who knows how well they were actually working on the fatal day. Still, I became quite concerned about the performance of the other SCBA in our inventory, so I retested all 350.
When the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) scheduled a meeting of the Technical Committee on Respiratory Protection and Personal Alarm Equipment in Pittsburgh later in 1995, I approached Pittsburgh Fire Department Chief Charlie Dickinson (now deputy administrator of the U.S. Fire Administration) and our union president Joe King to see how they felt about my attending the meeting and proposing that the NFPA write a standard for fire departments on maintaining SCBA. They were very suppor-tive. I then wrote a letter to then-chairman of the committee, Chief Al Santora of the Fire Department of New York, explaining my intentions. He would later lose his son in the 9/11 attacks; his encouragement and advice helped get us started.
I also approached Chief Bob Kolenda, whose son Marc was killed in the February 14, 1995, incident in Pittsburgh. He agreed to join the committee with me in 1996. We were determined to honor the memory of our fallen comrades by helping the committee create a maintenance standard for SCBA that would help firefighters work safely.
ONLY THE POSSIBLE
There are actually two standards today. One is compulsory (under penalty of law) from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA 1910.134; the other is the voluntary NFPA 1852, Standard On Selection, Care and Maintenance of Open-Circuit Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus. In developing the NFPA standard, the committee on which I served used the OSHA standard as the starting point, because OSHA is the minimum legal requirement. Then we looked at all of the other things that equipment manufacturers and fire departments can reasonably be expected to do to ensure that SCBA will work as they are supposed to.
This is not a perfect world. We know that fire departments are under a lot of time and financial pressures. The NFPA standard only asks for the possible, such as thoroughly testing this equipment at least once a year on a calibrated breathing machine. Because everything the NFPA standard asks for is important, reasonable, and possible, to my mind it rises to the status of a moral obligation.
The NIOSH, OSHA, and NFPA standards work together to protect the health and safety of firefighters. For example, a federal mandate requires NIOSH to investigate every incident in which a firefighter dies or is injured in a fire. Part of that investigation includes the fire department’s SCBA maintenance and testing program, which is something the NFPA standard has a lot to say about.
LIFE-SAVING MEASURES
Today’s SCBA are very good, and manufacturers are working hard to make them even better. In fact, I have never heard of a catastrophic failure of an SCBA. But what does happen, even with the best of them, is that, like a car driven too long without service, an SCBA can get “out of tune” and not deliver air as it is supposed to. If you’re the firefighter wearing such a unit, and you are laboring for breath, typically you will hit the regulator bypass button. This releases more air, but it also wastes air, shortening time available on that tank. This can have serious consequences.
Thorough testing is the only sure way of evaluating the condition and performance of SCBA, especially as they begin to age. If maintenance testing is overlooked, performance will degrade, and the equipment will not efficiently provide the necessary protection all firefighters deserve.
Here are some of the contributions the new NFPA standard has made to improved SCBA performance and safety.
 Photo courtesy of Biosystems. |
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Computer simulation. SCBA maintenance testing is now performed with easy-to-use computerized testers. These devices can simulate human breathing patterns and test all of the SCBA performance elements and save the test results to an electronic database. These testers are almost identical to the systems now used by the NFPA and all SCBA manufacturers to test new equipment designs in their laboratories.
Dynamic vs. static testing. Prior to NFPA 1852, maintenance standards were set by the individual manufacturers and approved by NIOSH. Some used only static instead of dynamic tests that would approximate conditions likely to occur during heavy frontline use. Static testing places the demand valve under vacuum pressure to see how much air the unit can deliver but does not show reaction time of the breathing valve and regulators. These devices have to open and close in response to an adrenaline-pumping firefighter gasping for the next breath that will keep him alive. In contrast, dynamic testing slams the valves open and closed in fractions of a second; it really pushes the SCBA to its design limits.
Breathing performance. I’ve had intelligent people tell me that the human body can’t process more than 103 liters of air in a minute. I don’t believe it. Only somebody who has been in the middle of a burning building can tell you how much air his body might need. NFPA 1981, Standard on Open-Circuit Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus for Fire and Emergency Services, requires a respiratory rate of 103 liters of air per minute, and NIOSH requires a breathing rate of 40 liters per minute. Both tests are required by NFPA 1852 and reflect critical aspects of SCBA performance.
Required NFPA 1852 tests. NFPA 1852 requires all fire departments to test their SCBA on a breathing machine at least annually. These annual tests include the following:
1. Facepiece leakage.
2. Facepiece exhalation valve opening pressure.
3. First-stage regulator static pressure.
4. Breathing resistance test at 40 L/min ± 1 L/min.
5. Breathing resistance test at 103 L/min ± 3 L/min.
6. First-stage pressure during breathing resistance test at 103 L/min ± 3 L/min.
7. First-stage pressure during breathing resistance test at 40 L/min ± 1 L/min.
8. Pressure gauge accuracy of the rated cylinder pressure.
9. End-of-service time indicator (activation).
10. Bypass flow rate.
11. The sound level of all audible end-of-service time indicators.
12. Complete visual inspection.
All SCBA must meet NIOSH, NFPA, and manufacturer specifications, and no SCBA can be considered safe if it fails to meet them.
Testing frequency. How often does an SCBA need to be tested?
1. On acceptance of new SCBA.
2. Once a year (minimum).
3. After any repair.
4. After any user complaint.
5. After a severe exposure.
Record keeping. A testing and maintenance program is only as credible as its record keeping. The NFPA-compliant tester checks every important aspect of a breathing apparatus and automatically stores a permanent record of the unit, test date, and test results in its database. Everything anyone might need to know about the condition of a given SCBA or the fire department’s test program can be gleaned from this database.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
There is no final word on safety. Common sense dictates that if you recognize any reasonable step that would significantly contribute to the health and safety of your personnel, you should take it.
Train for individual responsibility. One of the easiest and best steps we can take to protect firefighters is to train and encourage them to maintain a high level of personal awareness about the condition of their SCBA. This is also mandatory, since NIOSH and NFPA standards require a field check every time they are used (or at least once a month if they have not been used recently).
Individual firefighters should religiously keep SCBA airways and valves free of water, dirt, plaster, and the like. If they neglect this, SCBA performance will degrade faster than it should. Firefighters should know that if straps are rust-colored, they have lost the ability to withstand flames.
Beyond annual testing. The computerized tester also has a test that takes just two minutes and consumes less than one percent of the air in the unit’s cylinder. This check should be done every time an SCBA comes in for a minor repair or has seen excessive exposure. This can tell you if the unit’s performance is on a downward curve, so you can monitor it more closely. If the unit is starting to degrade, the next step is to look for the cause: loose screws, worn O-rings, and so on. Of course, maintenance people should note the rate of degradation during annual testing as well.
Who should test? Some departments do all of the testing; others send most or all of it out to a certified testing service. If you do it yourself, it is important to have staff who are well trained and dedicated to the job. If you send the units out, you need to have enough spares on hand so that you won’t run short. Volunteer fire departments typically have a problem with the cost and staffing required for testing. One way to get around this is for several volunteer departments to get together and jointly fund a computer test unit they can share.
Rotating SCBA. Periodically rotating SCBA between stations allows the equipment throughout the entire department to wear out more evenly. You can also put your spares into the rotation. This reduces replacement frequency and also improves the general level of safety.
Fire and ice. In my experience, SCBA are more prone to wear than catastrophic failure with one exception: ice damage during cold weather. Compressed air coming out of the narrow opening in the air cylinder creates its own little freezer in cold weather. Combine that with water flying everywhere, and you have the potential for ice formation on critical SCBA components. Users should be aware of this problem and exercise extreme caution when using an SCBA in subfreezing temperatures. After using breathing apparatus in cold weather, examine them for possible ice damage.
Firefighting is a dangerous profession. There will always be some life-threatening factors outside of human control. Proper SCBA testing and maintenance are not among them. Modern SCBA are capable of withstanding an enormous amount of use and abuse. This, however, is no excuse for being complacent about SCBA care, inspection, and annual testing.
NFPA 1852 spells out the what, when, and how of the steps we need to take to keep this equipment safe. Follow the standard religiously, and you will be able to do your job more confidently, knowing your next breath is protected.
Thanks to Chairman Ray Reed for his leadership and all the members of the Technical Committee on Respiratory Protection and Personal Alarm Equipment for their expertise and participation in the creation of this standard.
MICHAEL A. KREUGER served 31 years with the Pittsburgh (PA) Fire Department, retiring as captain of Engine Company 22. He is a member of the National Fire Protection Association’s Technical Committee on Respiratory Protection and Personal Alarm Equipment.
