The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
Thermal Insult Recognition Training
How many of you here are certified firefighters but have still yet to be taught how to identify the limitations of your PPE? With gear becoming better and better each year, do you or your Chief really know what is the weakest link in your personal protective ensemble?
This past weekend I hosted a class on Thermal Insult Recognition. We were able in a controlled environment, to NOT only tell you about "heat" like many classes but show/feel thermal insult recognition while wearing some of the best gear on the market.
All firefighters who go "interior" deserve to be trained in thermal insult recognition. Otherwise... what are they going to base their decision making process from? Is it when the low air alarm rings.... or is it when they exinguish that small or simulated fire with very little heat in a firefighter 1 class? Thing is most newly certified firefighters are so eager to be banged out to a job, do you feel comfortable with there training, experience or exposure to the elements? When the non-controlled fire rapidly escalates to untenable for the trained firefighter.... are they going to react positively or wait just a few extra seconds and we are hanging the bunting...
Firefighters need a systematic approach to sizing up the interior conditions, what I like to call the
Interior Benchmarking model. (FETC exclusive training, which will be offered at FDIC-2011)
Training firefighters for real world situations is what it is all about...
So again I ask, when your gear is at 100% heat saturation, what is the weakest link on your firefighters PPE?
Take Care and Stay Safe Brothers...
FETC
Photo Credit: Sarah Whitney Property of FETC Services, all rights reserved. No use without written permission from FETC and/or the photographer.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Walt Goebel on
-
weakest part of your ppe is you scba mask!?
-
-
i Just took a flashover class last week and my mask started to spider, so i crawled out and was then shortly followed by the rest of my class. then we noticed that so of the guys black gear had turned light brown. just fyi
-
Permalink Reply by FETC on
-
Walt glad to hear you were able to exit. Catastrophic failure of the mask happens fairly quickly.
Imagine if you were deep into a dwelling... stay safe.
-
Permalink Reply by Bill Carlisle on
-
Nice job by all, i just read the whole thread and learned a whole lot to pass on to my guys, will make a interesting pop quiz conversation at the station , thank you for the great information you all stay safe .
-
Permalink Reply by Russ on
-
i took the opprtunity to read some of the answers before trying to answer this post. to start with it is an excelent topic because the most frequest question i recieve from students is how do you know when you are in too deep? i answer that the one thing we cannot teach you is how to read a fire. that will come with expierence and that is somewhat of and OJT situation. we expose you to training burns so you "get a taste", but once you are really there you need to absorb, evaluate and REMEMBER what you were in and apply your observations to the next fire and apply what you learn. no matter how high tech our business becomes, it will allways be a hands on get in kind of profession...to answer the question, our gear meets a proformance standard and i believe the intent is to give us time to recognize when we are in a bad way and respond.
so the weakest link has to be the firefighter.
again thank you for the post, its a most important subject, one of my favorites
-
-
So true Russ and a favorite of mine too.
Statistics show us patterns... with flashovers and smoke explosions happening quicker than ever due to the fuels in the smoke. (fluid in motion) The fact that acrolein, tolulene, benzene, HCN are having low temperature flashovers should be a concern for all of us.
The fact that we are expected to "go in", the industry has provided us with superior personal protection, but many fire chiefs buy gear and have a false sense of security from training in the basement. All the more reason to be taught true thermal insult recognition.
And the primary reason why I looked to develop, and champion the subject matter. Glad to see so many others with the same passion.
Bill (FETC)
-
Permalink Reply by Tymothy on
-
On a diiferent note.. What about the guy in front or behind you inside that gear, is he/she capable of making quik and correct decisions in a a life or death situation. Im on a volunteer dept and im the only guy (that i kno of) with a Associates degree in this field. As for some of the guys im not sure where or what they have been trained. I do kno that a comment was made that some of them havent had any formal training since the 1990's. Kinda scary if you ask me. And what about our college system and state and federal regulated curriculum which still teaches 1960's and 1970's construction attack techniques. Im not sure about the rest of you out there but im sure most if not all of you would agree that fires act diiferently in modern day construction vs. pre ww2. Wouldnt all of these be considered "weak links" also??
-
-
I agree that "some" curriculums have not changed for many years. As far as lumping them into "all of them" I have to disagree. The fact that my state has visiting committees and is offering Pro-Board Certified Curriculum means the learning material needs to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis.
The reason this discussion exists is the fact that I feel even the updated curriculum is not keeping up with the hazards that firefighters are experiencing today.
-
-
do you remember the warning lables in the geer that says "proximity use only, not an entry garment?" LOL the first time i showed that to someone, they freaked! On a more serious note, do you support teaching how to read a fire? if so how would you teach a subject like that? i tried to run it by a few people as a stand alone type of class but i ended up dropping it and only referencing it to students as "a subject that cant be taught, but something you should be aware of" kind of thing. i imagine that it would be taught to recently certified firefighters in a firefighter safety typer of format and to Veterans as a refresher in a self rescue format....your thoughts on this sir, (everyone elses is welcome also)
-
Permalink Reply by John on
-
Awesome thread def gonna take this to the station house and share it with the crew.
-
Permalink Reply by Jason Russell Brannan on
-
I like the idea reading the stucture. I know this is not always possible, but our training and practic of making the fire go where we want it to is something we forget. Training on proper ventilation, PPA, and understanding what the fire nature is when we introduce fire control tactic before the actual attack. Knowing the that fire is going to move to low pressure and being able to establish this area help us to make a safer attack. At the same time if every firefighter onscene does not understand the tactics then it can be very dangerous for all involved.
-
Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
-
I believe that the "...not an entry garment" statement is intended to differentiate structural firefighting PPE from PPE designed to enter total flame environments.
Here's an example of a Fire Entry Suit...
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
