SCBA Drill

[Guest DADAY]

Here is a good drill to show how when relaxed an air bottle will last, and last.

Have some one put an SCBA and have them do a normal walk, or even a few juming jacks, (get them going). When they have reached 10 mins left have them shut the tank off and doff the pack.

Give a 10 min. or so break to have them relax.

Now put them in a environment that is relaxing, sit them on a chair put the pack back on.

Have them be totally relaxed.

Now time them,... As we all know the more relaxed you are the more air you will conserve.

Object of this drill: To show that when you relax you will have plenty of air. Not to mention the more calm you are the better in all emergency situations.

Make sure to point out that some will still suck down a bottle in 20 mins, when attacking.

Many variations are out there. I hope you get the general idea.

[x635 4,066]

That's a pretty interesting idea.

Also to note, physical fitness,staying in shape , and not smoking also helps to make the bottle last longer.

[Guest DFFD227]

As a Junior Firefighter, I use the Scott Paks a lot at drills, and I am very use to them, and comfortable with them. While doing smoke house, or other related things with an SCBA, I can make my air last a sufficient amount of time. But for some reason when the air is low, and the buzzers and the bells start going off that I'm low, I start to panic, and get nervous. Now I know that the smoke we use are not real, and I know that I can just rip my mask off and breath it without a problem, but I vowed to NEVER do that in a drill, I try to simulate as it is a real fire. I had a bad experience one time in a drill where I took a used Scott Pak, with like 10 minutes left on it, and we were doing a lengthy operation inside, until my air was low. I controlled my breathing, and was trying to stay calm, and I was almost out of the building with my crew unit I was totally out, and I had to take the mask off because I was OUT, and I wasn't getting any air at all. Now, I have to say that is one of my most biggest fears about going into a fire, is having no more air left!

[Guest alsfirefighter]

Realistically, unless you are entangled, or entrapped, there should be no reason why anyone should run out of air. When the vibraalert goes off you exit. If you are lost call a mayday before you run low on air, or let them know you are low so someone (FAST/RIT) knows you will need a swap.

Another good drill and one that needs to be constantly done, are your escape procedures, get skinny and so on. Also teaching everyone how to apply the SCBA quickie harness to themselves when needed. This can save 20 secs. or more in the event you go unconscious.

[Cutty630 37]

just another add in on this topic, for the drill if the members do run out of air see what they do when they run out. Most will panic and rip off their entire face mask. When they should actually stay calm and remove just their regulator. You can definately filter some of the bad air out by covering the hole with your nomex or a glove. It will only help you withstand the heat in the room and it will also help keep some of the smoke out of your eyes.

[tbendick 27]

One good thing FDNY does is send you into MASK course. During one of the stations as you move around a lot they shut down your tank.. They watch to see who will follow the correct steps and who will take off the mask.

The other thing they do is make you do the course with your Vibra Alarm on, to show how much air you have to use to exit.

[BFD1054 1,552]

This a great discussion and you have all added some great tips/points! Not to add a depressing affect to this, but maybe tbendick can add to this. I was told that when FDNY FF Thomas Brick was killed a few months back, he still had 1 or 2 minutes left on his bottle. Even after your vibra-alert stops, you may have some air left, not a whole lot, but some. Don't take your regulator off until you are possitive that there is absolutely no air left! Also, i believe that FF Brick was found with his entire mask off, not just his regulator, but his entire mask! As Cutty said, you should never do this! When you are absolutely out of air, remove your regulator and pull your nomex hood over the opening in your mask, or use you gloved hand if you have to! Also, i do not believe that FF Brick transmitted a mayday. If you are in trouble, don't have that "hero" mentality! Transmit the mayday while you still can, give the best description that you can of the area that you're in & don't give up! As ALS said, if you don't call for the mayday early, you may run too low on air and go unconscious! Just my thoughts & opinions.

[COMMANDCHIEF 4]

Stay in school . Say no to drugs.

[COMMANDCHIEF 4]

Stay in school . Say no to drugs.

[tbendick 27]

I don't have the report at home but I will try to see what I can remember.

I was told that when FDNY FF Thomas Brick was killed a few months back, he still had 1 or 2 minutes left on his bottle.

He had around 900psi left in the tank

Even after your vibra-alert stops, you may have some air left, not a whole lot, but some.

Try it one day. It was part of FDNY proby school to work with the Vibra Alarm on. During training we were not aloud to take off the mask until we were sucking nothing.

Don't take your regulator off until you are possitive that there is absolutely no air left!

100% true. If you are trapped or trying to get out keep it on till it's all gone.

Also, i believe that FF Brick was found with his entire mask off, not just his regulator, but his entire mask! As Cutty said, you should never do this! When you are absolutely out of air, remove your regulator and pull your nomex hood over the opening in your mask, or use you gloved hand if you have to!

FDNY teaches to take the entire mask off.. They teach not to remove the regulator. Why they do this I don't know. However they do teach that if you are not using your mask, you should take it off all together.

Also, i do not believe that FF Brick transmitted a mayday. If you are in trouble, don't have that "hero" mentality! Transmit the mayday while you still can, give the best description that you can of the area that you're in & don't give up! As ALS said, if you don't call for the mayday early, you may run too low on air and go unconscious!

This is the part the report focused on. No one will ever know how it came to be that he ended up with no mask on. When he still had air and a working mask. The one thing the report never addressed and I just thought of it now was his radio. It never mentioned if it was tested or in working order when found.

Just a note for all Departments with a TIC and FAST team.

Once the search for FF Brick began it wasn't long before he was found. A member of Rescue 3 using the TIC was able to locate him. It was brought to my attention that due to the high heat in the area his Bunker Gear and the debris around him began to have the same temps. This would make him not show up on the TIC. However the member using the TIC was trained to look for the Pressure Regulator on the side of the mask as this becomes cold and makes a big temp change.

A new drill some of the chiefs are talking about is taking a mask turning it on and having members see what it looks like on the TIC.

[Cutty630 37]

WOW thats a great idea!!!! I've used the tic for a lot of different things but (thank god [-o< ) I've never used it to find a lost firefighter. But that is definately a good idea about the pressure regulator, I never that the temp was that big of a difference..... Thanks THENDICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CHIEFPHIL 90]

There are several good drills when it comes to the use of SCBA's. One key thing I try to get accross , especially in my firefighter 1 classes is that you need to be comfertable with tha SCBA's use. Not to panic when that alarm goes off . FETN has a great saferty and survival tape series on SCBA use. Every year our department has a mandatory refresher on the use of SCBA's, we use them all year long, but once a year is just dedicated to the use.

1] class room setting on all the components of the scba

2] don full gear with a scba and begin a course event where they perfom the following:

escape thru a wall, we have a portable wall built with studs and wires, they must become low profile and get thru 2 studs, get there profile up and then crawl to a tunnel where they must again make there profile small to crawl thru the tunnel. the tunnel is about 10 feet long and has pipes, wires and an obsticale they must manuver around, then they walk to a room that they must search for a victim. We black out the mask. All this is done on air. Then they must enter the basement and navigate there way thru with a TIC. The final station is a blacked out room where they must don a SCBA totally blinded.

as a added bonus we blead each bottle down to the alarm limit. sit theguys down and let them breath until there is no air left. This is a confidence builder , as say they get pinned and cannot move, if they dont panic, this is how long your air could last. I have had people go 45 minutes on 500lbs of air. The last group I did the average was 18 minutes.

[Guest rreimund]

Awesome processe.

We just built a small portable half wall last night. It's just big enough to fully utilize a half sheet of plywood too if we chose to. We had the exact idea as well to drill through the studs (we used 2x6) and run some romex or some pipes through as obstacles. Is the idea in yours to learn to barrel through the obstacles in the wall? or do you leave them just enough space to squeeze through in low profile? We've been practicing getting through the stud walls with full gear, without doffing the pack or going into low profile.

For the Tunnel, what did you build that out of? Is it portable? is it stationary, or can you store it away pretty easily? Our firehouse doesn't have a ton of room to store this stuff, but I bet we could get creative.. just wondering what you used to build it.

[CHIEFPHIL 90]

We teach them to sound out hte wall first, basically to make sure it is not sheet rock over cement. We use some old sheet rock to cover only 1/2 of the wall, the other 1/2 is open to see the studs. We teach them to do the low profile, removing one shoulder strap, loosening the waist and sticking the bottle under the shouldered arm pit. We explain to everyone that "hey if you got time do it" if not take those studs out with an ax or whatever. In the event my guys get in this position, I hope they have tools. Hopefully they will never be in that position. Twice in my 22 yrs I have had to cut thru the studs to get into another room to extinguish a fire... getting off the subject.

Believe it or not we use left over garbage can holders for the tunnles. These are square built out of 2x6 pressure treated wood. They actually were like square boxes for garbage cans to be hidden on our main st. The town didnt want to be in the garbage business , so they chucked them. We picked them up and when you lay them down end to end, you get a perfect tunnle. The best home built tunnles would be get 4 -2x4 and then get 2 sheets of ply wood, cut them down the center and screw them together to the 2x4. Since you guys made a wall last night , you can do this one in less time.

As for storage, since this is made out of pressure treated wood, we just keep it in the corner of the parking lot. If you make your tunnle with screws, they you can disassemble it for easy storage.

Wh had a sprinkler house once and it was held together by hook, work well until some one shut the water off !

[CHIEFPHIL 90]

Oh, I forgot your other question, yeh all componets are portable. The tunnles are heavy and we can get all componets in 1 -8' pickup.

I teach a lot so I'm always taking them with me when I do a FF1 scba class.

This year we are looking into making a wall with a window. Trying to figure it out, wether we want an actual window or just a hole.

Any body done a wall with a window ?

[Guest rreimund]

Interesting.. nice call on the tunnel. We built the wall last night out of some salvaged lumber kicking around, but when the chief saw it he said if we ever wanted to build anything else, to let him know and he'd fund a trip to Home Depot for materials. That said, I may take him up on it for the tunnel phase.

I'm thinking of a way to use some carriage bolts on sections of the tunnel to make disassembly easier. So we can have some flat sections to put away.

In terms of dimensions, I'm guessing that the tunnel is about the size of a garbage can then. Roughly what? 30-36"?

Thanks for the great tips.

[Guest rreimund]

Ha!.. now it's my turn to forget one of your questions.. I thought about doing something with a window. But putting a window/big hole sort of defeated the purpose of having something portable and easy to setup/train on and then put away.

In terms of uses for a wall with a window I can only think of two off the top of my head.. I know there are more.

1.) Practice moving around a room following a wall with mask/vision obscured. You'll want to train guys to find and identify a window without seeing it. I think in this case using a real room (maybe a meeting room at the firehouse or something) would be more helpful as you can then move around real world obstacles, etc.

2.) For survival training, practice emergency egress, using a tool and a rope, or head first out a ladder, etc. Nevertheless, in that case, a small wall with a window at ground level isn't very useful, and using a real room can be damaging because using the tools doesn't tend to be very good for sheetrock.

That said, 1.) can easily be done at the firehouse and 2.) is most likely better done in a more controlled environment at a training center. I wouldn't advise doing any of the emergency egress stuff without making sure you have a line holding people up.. that's a liability and safety nightmare without it.

[CHIEFPHIL 90]

The tunnel we have is 36"x36", once you put in a 1"pipe thru it and add some obsticals you'll make it very narrow. Good luck on building the props.

A window is the tough one. My buddy is a ff in a large CT career dept and he built tons of props for their training division that are portable [carpenter by trade] so I'm gonna get him working on this for us.

[Guest rreimund]

The tunnel we have is 36"x36", once you put in a 1"pipe thru it and add some obsticals you'll make it very narrow. Good luck on building the props. 

A window is the tough one. My buddy is a ff  in a large CT career dept and he built tons of props for their training division that are portable [carpenter by trade] so I'm gonna get him working on this for us.

Sounds good.. keep us posted on the progress.