PASS devices
Les Leckie
Fire Consultant
Salford, Manchester, England
As a former firefigher and now consultant specializing in firefighter safety, I was very interested in the PASS device article, particularly since I have just completed a fact-finding visit to the United States. I visited five fire departments, and nothing I learned would contradict the symptoms of the problem Roche describes. However, I question his position that integrated PASS devices are the best answer.
Based on my experience of equipment procurement for the second largest fire department in the United Kingdom, I foresee potential technical problems with integrated PASS devices. Not only will they greatly increase the cost of SCBA, but no matter how well they are constructed, they will increase the risk of SCBA sets becoming defective. They will also restrict the development of improved PASS devices, which should not only sound an audible alarm, as they do now, but should also provide location data about downed firefighters to assist search and rescue teams.
The article indicates that a lack of training and discipline can be cited as a contributing factor in a number of tragedies because firefighters forget or decline to turn on their PASS units. Providing an integrated unit that will be automatically turned on with the SCBA partially addresses this problem, but it does nothing about the root cause. From what I have been told, it is not uncommon for U.S. firefighters to remove their SCBA while still inside the building despite Clause 5-3.5 of NFPA 1500. The integrated PASS unit will not address this issue. In my view, it is the discipline problem that has to be resolved, and this must involve better command and control of firefighters wearing SCBA.
As a consequence of the deaths of British firefighters in circumstances similar to those described in the above article, the UK fire departments introduced and developed procedures that have been in use for more than 35 years. The cornerstone of the procedure is an entry control system whereby each member of every SCBA team is identified together with the location where the team will be working. Each SCBA team has a tally identifying the team member, and this is connected to a key, the removal of which activates the PASS device (in the U.K. these are called automatic distress signaling units, or ADSU). This system not only ensures that the PASS device is switched on, but, since it can only be deactivated by the reinsertion of the key, the firefighter is not tempted to switch it off. I note that false alarms from PASS devices are perceived as a problem in the U.S., but in the more than five years of experience I have had with U.K. manufacturered units, I have not found this to be an issue.
Clause 6-5 of NFPA 1500 describes a rapid intervention crew for rescue of downed firefighters. The U.K. entry control system has a similar provision with the added advantage that the crew have information about the location of the SCBA teams. This facility is soon to be enhanced by the introduction of the Radio Evacuation and Distress System (REDS), which will identify precisely which PASS device has been activated together with facilities to evacuate totally or selectively.
There is an old saying on this side of the Atlantic: “It is a poor workman who blames his tools.” If a lack of discipline is the cause of the problem, then it needs to be addressed because it will always be a potential killer on the fireground.
