WA Fire Chiefs Association Responds to SCBA Alert

Guidelines for Chief Officers to Immediately Enhance Firefighter Safety

The IAFC announced today a series of guidelines for chief officers to adopt in light of the recent NFPA alert about open circuit SCBA face-piece lens safety. These guidelines are intended to provide chief officers with a set of specific, immediate actions to enhance firefighter safety while beginning the planning process to make systemic changes necessary going forward.

Research conducted over the past few years has identified an alarming trend in the protective ensemble of structural firefighters. Specifically, temperatures encountered under extreme conditions when other protective components may allow a firefighter to survive have been found to be far in excess of the ability of face-piece lenses to absorb without failure. (See Emergency First Responder Respirator Thermal Characteristics: Workshop Proceedings (pdf), Pittsburgh Workshop, July 2010, NIST Special Publication 1123; Fire Exposures of Fire Fighter Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus Facepiece Lenses, NIST Technical Note 1724, Nov. 2011.)

Such failures have either directly resulted in or been a contributory factor in several firefighter fatalities. (See NIOSH Reports F2005-31 and F2009-11.)

“We have, for some time, been aware of the challenges posed by the construction materials and performance requirements of SCBA face-piece lenses,” said Chief Al Gillespie, president of the IAFC. “Our goal in sending this message to our membership is to alert chief officers to the need to act tactically while thinking strategically in addressing this very serious issue involving firefighter safety. I would like to thank the NFPA, NIST and NIOSH for their leadership in producing science-based evidence addressing the need to improve the PPE envelope of our firefighters.”

In the short term, fire chiefs should ensure the following:

• Immediately inspect every face-piece lens in your department. Remove and replace any lens that appears to have suffered thermal insult or is damaged. Infrequently used face pieces (including those used in RIT bags) should be similarly checked.
• The information contained in the NFPA Alert should be widely distributed and become part of a mandatory training program-including the reference and supporting materials identified in the alert-for all personnel.
• All firefighters should be required to participate in an awareness program identifying the limitations of SCBA face-piece lenses and other structural PPE components.
• Ensure that face pieces are always stored in an appropriate protective bag to reduce the chance of degradation by UV light and to limit scratching or deforming face-piece lenses.

Additionally, chief officers should promote the following actions:

• Prompt application of water in a compartment involved in fire is critical in reducing the incidence of exposure to extreme temperatures. Traditional theories associated with the application of water in spreading fire have been found to be factually inaccurate, pointing to the need for dramatic changes in strategies and tactics during structural fire attack. Firefighters should be encouraged to apply water immediately into a compartment when the compartment is accessible, particularly from outside an IDLH environment. Although this represents a significant departure from the “attack through the unburned compartment” approach, recent scientifically-based research demonstrates unequivocally that the prompt application of water to a compartment on fire from outside the IDLH is not only appropriate, but preferred in safeguarding firefighter lives.
• Personnel should increase their use of technology to help measure thermal temperatures during fire-attack operations, including using thermal-imaging cameras.
• Rehab-group supervisors should consider routinely inspecting face-piece lenses while personnel are in rehab. Safety officers may want to add this to the compliment of responsibilities for on-scene incident safety officers to ensure the inspections are being completed.
• Directors of training and training chiefs should maintain a heightened awareness of the risks associated with repeated exposures to heat of SCBA components used by training instructors. An aggressive inspection and replacement program should be implemented, including pre-inspection of face-piece lenses during live fire training operations, in compliance with NFPA 1403 and NFPA 1404. (See Status Investigation Report of Three Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (pdf), NIOSH Task No. 14292, May 2007.)

In the longer term:

• Chief officers must begin to work immediately to identify funding sources in anticipation of the release of the new NFPA 1981 standard in 2013.

The IAFC will undertake the following:

• Federal grant programs should be encouraged to support grant applications that ask to replace SCBA face-piece lens components during the next grant cycles.