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Permalink Reply by FETC on February 19, 2011 at 6:48pm

The lens material used in all masks are from the same manufacturer. The difference is the thickness. They all have to go through the same "minimum heat" testing. The department that suffered the loss, shouldn't be doing their own testing, no fire department is controlled enough to be accurate. That should be done by the manufacturer. There are so many variables that could effect the spidering as well. Age of mask, how many previous fires has it seen, time, temperatures, exposure duration, etc. Exposure alone could be as easy as a mask lens that is at maximum heat saturation and the subject kneels up a few inches higher than the other guy. Same goes for someone with the same time, heat, duration of exposure, doesn't rise up and suffers no failure. I see instructor masks fail when the instructor stands up "to pop a door or window" The heat at that specific level is much hotter than the previous floor level.

I have personally seen av 2000, 3000, MSA and Interspiro's with mask failures, mostly in the flashover container, but I have also seen them at an exterior ARFF pit, and a simple Class A hay and pallets mobile burn trailer.

Realize this.... Spidering, cracking, dimpling, or drooping are all bad and the firefighter is just seconds from total lens failure and searing of his or her lungs!

So how do we learn from these mask failures? IMO flashover training is okay. Most instructors teach to the prop's L/P and not to the true "potential" of the scenario. I developed and teach a class called, Thermal Insult Recognition for which I can identify the thermal insult before the spidering or mask failure occurs.

Please review my thread on Thermal Insult Recognition here, and read through the dialogue: http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/thermal-insult-recogn...

TCSS
FETC

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