Breathing Apparatus Guidelines

[Guest]

Just some points relating to the use of Guidelines within buildings.

Most fire crews admit that the main reason we do not consider using guidelines in certain buildings is the lack of tie-off points.
So if we, as Firefighters have identified that there is no means of securing the guidelines in most premises, what have we done about it?
 The answer invariably is NOTHING! (apart from thinking that we will never have to use them anyway!)

In my opinion we have failed in at least 2 counts in relation to guidelines.
1. We have identified a potential hazard, but done nothing more, so if there is a fire in the premises we have 2 choices (A)  Use guidelines in the knowledge that they will not be laid properly and will in most cases, be more of a hindrance than a help.
(B) Do not use them at all and hope that everything turns out all right and no one is injured as it would be difficult to justify not using them if there was an accident inquiry.

2. We have also not made the owner or employers of the building in question aware of the problem as they may be willing to do something about it. I know that there is legislation coming into force soon that will make it the owner/employers responsibility for the health and safety of anyone who may have to work in the premises, but in the past, during our 1.1.d visits, we have identified loads of buildings where we should use guidelines, but we know we cannot secure them properly.

Here then is a suggestion of what we could do to stop problems in the future.
When crews are carrying out Operational information gathering on a certain building  and they think that there is potential for utilising guidelines if the building was involved in fire, they should see if there is any means of securing them. If not, they will inform the building owner of this, and put the responsibility onto them to provide means of securing the guidelines. If they refuse, we can then say that they were made aware of the problem and did nothing about it, which would absolve fire authorities from any possible litigation.
 More importantly, it would make it safer and easier for Breathing Apparatus crews to search buildings.
 The cost of fitting the Guide line securing Hooks would be minimal, and not all buildings would require them.

I would appreciate comments and opinions on this matter.

[fireftrm]

No.

We should be discouraging the use of any such trivial piece of equipment. Do you really think that putting a few hooks on walls in buildings would make guideline use safer/easier? ........................ I cannot use the owrds I want to.

They are inherently dangerous, difficult, confusing, outdated, slow, etc. What possible reasons would we have for promoting their use?

When did they save people rather than kill them? Gillender St etc.......

Why would we want to send Ffs into a BURNING building to lay out a piece of string (flammable) in order that they could find thier way back? Why not use a hosereel/hose - easier to follow (they would have it in their hands and it is a tad bigger) and it can be used to fight the fire! Also it is less likely to burn through - as it is internally cooled by water flow.

Why not use some piece of equipment like a TIC? See below for the childish games this prevents.

If the building is so heavily smokelogged and yet the fire is not so dangerous as to burn through the piece of string then use PPV! Or, if properly trained, use it offensively - once you can see you don't need to play 'follow the string'

Guidelines should be removed and put in a museum with leather hose, bellow BA and steam fire pumps. A good idea (?) when they were designed but no place in the modern firefighter's toolkit.

[Billy]

To Fireftrm

could you explain the problem with a piece of equipment that will lead you to an exit even in total darkness?

How do you systematically search a building with a hosereel?

What is the significance of a guideline being flammable when the first basic rule of firefighting is never to pass fire?

How do you think that somewhere to secure a guideline onto would be a bad idea?

Could you explain what the problems with guidelines would be if you could read the tabs and also secure them properly within premises?

I thought that TICs should be used in conjunction with guidelines and not in place of them?
Finally, if you are advocating the use of hosereels instead of guidelines- try putting 5 BA teams with hosereels in the same doorway in a medium to large building, and then withdraw them in the order they went in and see what happens?

[Mr. P]

Seen it done and it works; pre laid GL's and eye bolts to off to.
fireftrm- care of duty to others - so you expect a fellow ff to put themselves at risk to rescue you from below where you fell through the floor after you decided not to follow GL and instead dragged your HL across a hole or collapse section? Shame on you.
Anyhows- with the laws newly (ish) standing, do not owners/occupiers of premises have responsibility to safegaurd ff's in their line of duty when responding to that premise? If on initial inspections or even at regs apllication stage, inspecting/approving officers could with the rith spiel argue that tie off points are required even to the extent of pre laid line going in. Half the job done. (Yes I know that a GL pre laid, could be expected to be gone in fire but still, would not that then tell the ff something? OOps.) Pre laid GL's can aid escape for occupants also. Risk assesssment and training Et Al.

[nr42]

I was directed to this website by IOSH. I was seeking some tachnical advice on the capacity of BA bottles.
The oil rig I work on has BA sets equipped with air bottles charged to 300 bar. I need to know the number of litres of air in the bottle when it is fully charged as we are ordering a slide rule for our BA control boards (we have the wrong pressure on our existing slide rules). Does anybody know of a formula to use to make such a calculation? The empty displacement of the BA bottles is 6.8 litres. Thanks for any help

Nick Rainsford

[fireftrm]

Litres when charged is 1800. It should be directly proportional to the pressure - i.e. increase pressure by four times, four times the air. So 300 bar and 6.8l at atmospheric pressure should give 2040l, but there is some loss over 200bar so it is nominally the 1800l. Whoever you buy the calculator from would have the correct ruler anyway - tell thewm the cylinder capacity and charging pressure and they should have told you this. Good to see that IOSH sent you here, but maybe a little disappointing that they didn't know the gas laws - basic GCSE physics actually!

[Billy]

NR42

Sounds like the same problem strathclyde had, and fireftrm is right in saying that there is a gas law that tells you exactly what the loss is.


We initially thought that our our twin-pack cylinders had a capacity of 2400 litres  but the correct volume is in fact 2160 litres.

Hope this helps !

[dave bev]

nr42, pleased to see you receiveda reply, especially when looking at your name!!

seriously ba duration tables are being (very soon i imagine) reveiwed in light of the findings of bdag. cfoa have produced a 'schedule' (though thats probably not the right phrase) for a task and finish group to do the reveiws - duration tables are not the most acurate in the world and are actually being found not to be providing correct information in terms of their accuracy.

dave bev

[burgermuncher999]

Could it be that ba tables and the calculation of working duration is more than likely going to be superseded by the compulsory use of ba telemetry. Perhaps a new technical bulletin will state this in the form of guidance.
If the service goes down the route of national procurement (with UK resilience a driver for change) the costs of the upgrade to newly available technology would be greatly reduced as manufacturers compete aggressively for what should be a fairly lucrative contract.
All of this is however supposition on my part, if anyone knows differently please keep us informed.

[fireftrm]

As Dave says duration tables should be treated as loose guides - the best we have at present but nothing beats communication with the wearers. Telemetry systems on the market will help greatly as they constantly update in line with actual wearer use. I have no doubt that extreme conditions can be experienced in any fire on a rig (basically as for a ship) and so treat the tables with care.

[ernie ewen]

a quick formula for 300 bar cylinder for duration tables is 300 bar X 6.8 = 2040 x.9 = 1836 the .9 is the compression factor hope this helps Firetrm is correct

[WarrantManz]

geez.Sorry that I am confused. whats does the gas law says about this

[TS]

I stumbled into this site looking for information on BA Cylinders and durations. Although not a professional Fire Fighter like most of you I have attended a number of fire courses during my offshore life and found the comments above very interesting. I recently attended a fire course where the instructor told us that the BA Cylinders we used were 6.8 L with 300 bars pressure (3000 PSI) he also stated that the duration was 55 minutes! Reading your comments I feel that this may be wrong – can anyone explain to me if this is correct, because I work it out (using the above formula) at 1800L which would make it 45 minutes, also where can I get information on the Dorset calculator?

[fireftrm]

That instructoir was definitley wrong. 6.8l 300bar cylinders give 45 minutes full duration and thus 35 minutes working. 10 minutes us the safety margin and SHOULD NEVER be used under normal wearing. It is there for emergencies (like wearer trapped) only. The instrcutor and training provider need to be put right quickly.

[TS]

Thank you for your comments. I will be returning to that centre in the New Year and I will tackle this issue – take heart from the fact it is not a UK provider and that is no excuse I know.