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Comment by Jay Nicholson on March 21, 2009 at 12:09pm

I'll give you my own history of PPE wear. When I first started, circa 1977, we wore turnout coats, gloves and helmets on structure fires. Turn out pants were only worn at night as a means of dressing faster. Watch Emergency and you'll see. Now this is west coast I'm speaking for. My time in the service we wore hip waders.
In the early 80s, we added brush pants to the mix. These were worn over duty uniform pants. About this time, scba's became require wear on vehicle fires.
In the early 90s, hood came about and shortly after that, full turnouts wear required on structure, vehicle fires. Brush gear is required on of course brush fires.
Hope this helps a little.

Comment by Ron Maddox on March 20, 2009 at 10:55pm

Here is a website for you: http://www.fireengineering.com/display_article/331803/25/ONART/none/BRNIS/The-History-of-Firefighter-Personal-Protective-Equipment?dcmp=rss

From a personal stand I do have some history that I have found over the years. but you may need to refine your research even more... PPE is still a broad subject: for example-
SCBA - until the 1960's there were no real SCBA tech. In the early days if you look at old picturesmost firefighters had long beards, this was not for looks. They would wet their beards and place the whiskers in their mouthes and breath through that to try and filter contaminants. In the 60's they made a type of SCBA but most firefighters called them "widow makers" because they had no low air alarm. Then came the Scott 2A, Survie Air, and many more and today we have units like the Scott NXG2 that has audible, visual, and vibration alerts and controled by a computer.

Bunker gear - Early on in firefighting firemen would have a uniform of wool. The long sleeve, double breasted shirt, pleated pants suspenders and boots. The purpose of the wool was simple, it will retain water and protect from burns (but the steam sucked). In the 20's - 40's they were no more than rubber rain coats with a liner in them. Then came what I started with - long coats which were knee lenght coats with a thermal quilted barrier. Today we have Nomex, Kevlar and built in Harnesses.

Bunker pants - are relatively new most of us that have been around for years wore hip boots under our long coats - those were the days....

Boots were in the days no more than heavy boots made with multiple layers of leather to protect the feet. then came rubber boots and reenforced arch and heals and so on...

I dont have enough time to talk about gloves.

Helmets started as parade trophies that could also double as water buckets. then floppy leather to metal them plastic to poly carbonate.

Hope this helps. let me know if you need any thing for your paper.

Lt. Ron Maddox