The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
When Do You Go On Air? Yard Breathng
Its been along time since I masked up. I keep seeing comments about yard breathing. I remember turning on the bottles in the engine, grabbing a line and going in. (yes we did check doors and windows and signs for backdrafts)
Is the new school to turn on the air at the door? And if you have a 30 min bottle, how long to you plan on being inside?
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by 55 TRUCK on
-
My mask is hooked up to the regulator,I just let it hang. When I get to the point I need
it I takee off my helmet mask up and go. This is how I do it other guys do the same thing.
Some have there own way. In IFD when u relieve your man in the am you check the air pack out. Each IFD ff is issued there own mask & regulator.
-
Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
-
I'm an officer. In my part of the world, "mask up" means actually putting the mask on your face and breathing the air" and we don't do it until we're immediately outside the IDLH atmmosphere/area either.
-
-
Mark,
A couple of things for the clarification...
1) If you mask up but don't breathe the air, you reduce your peripheral vision.
2) You also you start heating yourself up unnecessarily wearing part a PPE item that blocks your face's ability to shed body heat. Most people get around 1/3 of their evaporative cooling from their heads, so you can block somewhere around 15% to 20% of your cooling mechanism by wearing the mask without the cooling effect of the compressed air.
3) You also can start fatiguing yourself unnecessarily by re-breathing your own exhaled carbon dioxide, which causes metabolic lactic acidosis, which causes fatigue.
I don't recommend starting the fatigue process or the overheating process prematurely.
-
-
It's impossible to avoid some tunnel vision when wearing your mask. The sides of the mask are not transparent and they block your peripheral vision.
Co-incidentally, your peripheral vision can actually pick up details that your central vision does not - if you don't block it with black rubber before you have to.
-
-
45 seconds isn't time to do anything like a complete size-up for anything bigger than a shed fire.
-
-
Fatigue comes from re-breathing your exhaled carbon dioxide that gets captured in your mask when you don't have the positive pressure that breathing the compressed air gives you.
It's worse with some brands of SCBA than others, depending on the nose cup design, exhalation valve design, and the attachment design for the 2nd stage regulator. It is also somewhat dependent on the individual firefighter's size, lung capacity, and respiratory tidal volume.
-
-
I didn't say anything about oxygen percentages and that's not the issue.
The issue is that the mask traps your own exhaled carbon dioxide and makes you re-breathe some of it. Increased respiratory levels of carbon dioxide causes metabolic acidosis (lactic acid buildup) in your bloodstream.
Lactic acidosis causes fatigue.
Then there's the problem with your mask blocking some of your body's natural evaporative cooling ability. That makes you heat up more quickly, and that also causes fatigue.
So, no matter how well you do after wearing the mask without breathing the air, you could probably have done better by not putting on the mask until you're ready to breath the air and go to work.
-
-
Great question. I bet you've been to a couple or three fires sometime...this week.
-
Permalink Reply by Robert Owens on
-
Im not disputing it but Im just saying it has not happend to me, I do not feel more fatigued, or do I have issues with tunnel vision
I have never tripped, fallen, missed a hazard, hit another FF, etc. while coming off the rig with my mask on.
I have however been ready to work when I arrived and me and my company (also wearing there masks) were put to work while other companies that arrived sooner were standing in the yard getting "masked up"
Again to each there own but I prefer showing up ready to work, and ready to get put to work. Got to go in alot of good fires 4th due because of this, and been first in on the line when arriving second while guys were messing with masks...
-
-
"Im not disputing it but Im just saying it has not happend to me, I do not feel more fatigued, or do I have issues with tunnel vision
I have never tripped, fallen, missed a hazard, hit another FF, etc. while coming off the rig with my mask on."
...yet.
-
-
Man of all I said, the best you could reply was with an immature "yet"
Perhaps since I train this way, and we operate this way on a daily basis we have become good at it? Maybe you would be to if you trained this way.
Like I said I even work out in my mask, I have become completely comfortable in my mask, of 600 firefighters in my FD I would say over half operate this way, very few if any fireground injuries....Sure luck plays a factor in everything we do, but it could be some training and skill taking over as well.
There is more than one road to get to Baltimore, but if you wanna sit in traffic on 95 at the mixing bowl every trip be my guest, I will hope off on 301.
-
Permalink Reply by Gregory Borg on
-
Ben, all this time I thought you were a tail gunner with a lot to say!!
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
