Where firefighters come to talk training

MSA low pressure and High pressure SCBA's

My department is putting MSA High pressure SCBA's in our first run vehicles with MSA low pressure SCBA's for our reserve engines that we use for when we recall off duty firefighters. My concern is that we will be potentially using both high pressure packs and low pressure packs at emergency scenes. Does anyone else run 2 different types of SCBA's in their department and does anyone see an issue we the potentially having 2 types of air packs on an emergency scene?

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Larry Lasich on April 2, 2009 at 10:54pm

What is the time rating for the two different bottles? What's your Air Managment SOP? If you use the "first half is for the fire, the second half (less 500 psi) is for me" rule, your RIT, RIC, FAST, whatever, could be in the h*** if you get jammed up.

If low pressure is all you can afford, well, 50 percent of anything is better than 100 percent of nothing.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bob Carpenter on April 5, 2009 at 10:58pm

I smell disaster. I would really like to hear the argument for different SCBAs withinn the same system. You cannot game-plan for your incident action plan. It is hard enough to strategize an incident. Combining working time/pack capacities/refill issues? IMHO this is not well thought out and should be stopped before it can't be undone.

▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion

RSS

Welcome to
Fire Engineering Training Community

Sign Up
or Sign In

Or sign in with:

Policy Page

PLEASE NOTE

The login above DOES NOT provide access to Fire Engineering magazine archives. Please go here for our archives.

CONTRIBUTORS NOTE

Our contributors' posts are not vetted by the Fire Engineering technical board, and reflect the views and opinions of the individual authors. Anyone is welcome to participate.

For vetted content, please go to www.fireengineering.com/issues.

We are excited to have you participate in our discussions and interactive forums. Before you begin posting, please take a moment to read our community policy page.

Be Alert for Spam
We actively monitor the community for spam, however some does slip through. Please use common sense and caution when clicking links. If you suspect you've been hit by spam, e-mail peter.prochilo@clarionevents.com.