What color is your helmet?

A lot of times, the role of a firefighter is determined by the color of his helmet, but accross the board there is no uniformity in establishing just who is who. For instance in one County, a Red helmet is a new firefighter, but in an adjoining county, a red helmet could be that of an officer. In a critical situation where mutual aid is needed, it could be critical to properly identify who is who without actually going up and asking the person their names and titles. Would you think that perhaps it should be necessary to establish a common system used by everyone to avoid fire scene confusion? Just wanted to see what folks think?

I'm a Red helmet. In my County it means I am the new firefighter. What do the different colors mean where you are? Do you even classify people by the color of their helmet?

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Permalink Reply by Andy Turnham on October 12, 2011 at 10:06pm

Totally agree, where I come from we have National standards for the Fire Service - rank insignia, operating standards, training, equipment, the lot.

You could take a retained firefighter (nearest thing we have to a volunteer) from a rural Brigade and drop him/her into a large urban Brigade and the only problem they might face is call volume, everything else would be totally familiar.

Saves a lot of confusion and makes a lot of sense.

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Permalink Reply by Ron King (Fire Chief) on October 12, 2011 at 11:00pm

Black -Firefighter Red- Cap. Lt. White- Dep. Chief & Chief.

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Permalink Reply by Olivia Jones on October 13, 2011 at 3:42am

I dont know where Andy is from but I LOVE a simple system.

Where I am from we have some uniformity in that Chief and Asst Chief are white and Lts and Capt red. That is most of the time. Then each dept within the county has a different helmet fornew guys old guy so on and so forth.

Then you have me the only person in a few countys and I am including the DODFF (dept of defense firefighters) that has a WORKING pink helmet. It is not for show nor is it a "trophy" everytime I roll it is on my head, I have done everything from direct traffic, fight fires, been in the vehicle doing patent care while extrication was ongoing, to all forms of training. When I went to a structre fire controll training the hosting dept offered to let me use a black helmet they had, I thought it was sweet but explaied " this is my helmet there are many like it but this one is mine"

Although one of the guys came up with a funny joke see the guys in the white helmets think they know everything, the guys in the red helmets think they know everything, mix the two and talk to the woman in the pink as she does know everything. He even created a rank for me for while I was called the "Captenant"

But back to the topic I feel that everything should be the same across the board, one of the first things I did after I ran my first call as a FF ( it was a med call) I dumped every med bag we had and set them all up the exact same way. It took a long time but it helped. Then within the dept we started setting the trucks up the same and it got better however as Mike pointed out when you run mutual aid you may need to find something on someone elses rig and its not anywhere you think it should be, or you are asking a probie a question ment for IC, etc.

Did I mention I love a simple system that goes across the board, but hell we cant even agree what color uniforms FF/EMS/LEOS should wear in this country, or what color the blinking lights on our vehicles should be, someplaces FF should have red lights other places blue.

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Permalink Reply by Andy Turnham on October 13, 2011 at 9:57am

Andy is from Britain, although now living in Canada.

This is the standard helmet colours and markings are for all of Britain. Helmet types may differ and there is some variation in rank naming but the markings are all the same.

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Permalink Reply by ashfire on October 13, 2011 at 10:39am

I know this has been done before on FFN.

My county has all officers Chief to Sgt White

Firefighter Yellow or Black

EMS Blue

New Firefighter and Juniors (Mostly Volunteer) Red

Someone wanting to see what its like to be in the fire dept. Orange

CERT Green

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Permalink Reply by 55 TRUCK on October 13, 2011 at 3:24pm

Black are Firefighters, A probie has Probie on there shield. Red is Lt. and Capt. White is a chief officer.

Lt and Capt have bugles and Lt. or Capt. on there shield same with Chiefs. Besides our stuff is so cooked some of the Red helmets look black. Especialy at night.

You won't see a system like in England over here. Maybe a county will adopt one.

It would be to difficult to do at a state level.

Besides it isn't hard to tell who is a officer on a fire scene. Just look for a person or persons standing with a readio and pointing at things.

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Permalink Reply by Michael P. Burke on October 13, 2011 at 6:26pm

I bring it up because I heard some stories and I understand that confusion could exist. What surprises me is that the issue is still there. I know the local fire services have been dealing with it for quite some time and nobody seems to come to a consensus on it. The most important part of a helmet is that it protects your head right? Is it a pride thing or should it be left to common sense? The way i had understood the mechanics of things, it sounds it should work, having a consistency throughout, but in actuality, it's just not that way.

I have never seen our EMS people even wearing a helmet. I agree if they do it should be blue. I know that some communities have CERT teams and green is their color. My community presently does not have CERT teams and should think about it.

My area in the event of a major incident is going to rely very heavily on the available resources, pushing us to our limits. We have other outside resources available to us from both the Private and Federal sectors,

Our area is near DC, so we have military resources that we could use from 3 major bases. We have the auxiliaries of the Air Force and Coast Guard and the State militia.

The Incident Command Class (ICS) as I understand it talks about the delegation of the command structure during an incident, it establishes who sits on top during the event. I have not yet had the class and when I do I look forward to doing very well with it because my past experiences have given me a brief overview of it. I had asked the question just to understand a little better, BTW, you guys didn't say where you were from?

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Permalink Reply by Wade Seely on October 13, 2011 at 8:08pm

yellow-probie

black- firefighter/Lt

Red- Capt

white- chief

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Permalink Reply by ashfire on October 13, 2011 at 8:50pm

The one reason our EMS people have blue helmets is because they have to carry turnout gear on the ambulance.

We had a incident at a warehouse where a haz mat incident happened. The call was for sick people and the crew found out different. They tried to help bring out the people and became part of those in need of help before the other responding units got there.

After that all crews have to have turnout gear and the ambulances carry SCBA.

Its not hard to start a CERT group in your area. Just contact your county government and see who handles that.

Even Fire Corps is a good idea for any dept.