Will foam save our babies?
Bill McMahon
Fire Service Consultant
McMahon Associates
Waterford, Connecticut
I enjoyed reading “Will Foam Save Our Babies?” (Bill Manning, Editor`s Opinion, March 1996) and have some comments to add.
It`s nice when a company such as Pyrocap International comes along with a new foam that will save lives. Then it is willing (at government expense) to show us how to use the foam to save lives, and I am sure it would give the fire service all the foam we need for training. What a program the fire service could have with an annual $10 million grant to install wired-in smoke detectors and/or residential sprinklers nationwide. That would also save lives.
It is starting to come to light that the fire service was better off and had fewer problems before the federal government`s involvement. OSHA regulations for firefighter safety got us into so much trouble with ourselves in the name of safety. It took a fire service NFPA 1500 committee to challenge the fire service to take a good look at what we were doing to ourselves and how we could do our jobs safely with the tools and equipment available to us. When the National Fire Academy started, the fire service thought it was going to be great. If all the time and energy the fire service has spent trying to keep it afloat (budget, control, etc.) were spent on keeping our customers alive, I believe there would be fewer fire related deaths. If it weren`t for all this so-called federal help we get, the career and volunteer systems might have more firefighters, have more money, and be better able to service providers.
