Provision and use of equipment

[Guest]

In relation to equipment provided by brigades- why is it that we can still have BA guidelines on appliances that we cannot use properly with our gloves on!

Do we take our gloves off and reduce our level of PPE, or do we guess which way is in or out and possibly get it wrong?

Surely they should all be taken off the run as they don't work with gloves on, and more importantly, most brigades know the problem with them so who is liable if the brown stuff hits the fan?

[pugh]

Maybe until someone builds a better mousetrap the fire service will continue to use this method of getting people lost in smoke.

Seriously, maybe part of the problem lies with your gloves.  I have seen some horrendous gloves dished out as PPE in my time.  Great big, baggy, shaggy things that hold so much water you could extinguish a reasonable fire by just wringing them out over it.  And as for being able to distinguish the shape of small items whilst wearing them, it is completely out of the question.

There are some very good gloves out there that do make life at least tolerable for the BA wearer when committed on a guideline.  Encourage active participation by the users in the procurement process when your brigade goes out to buy stuff that you will have to use.

Another slightly more contentious area is the issue of suitable and SUFFICIENT training.  Most firefighters I know do not train with the most difficult bits of kit purely because they are so dificult (remember line comm's?).  Be honest, think back and see just how many times you have deployed a guideline on station drill.  Not so many, I'll bet.  Yet this training time is exactly the time for doing this.  Familiarity in this instance won't breed contempt and might just help one dark day.

Stay safe.

[fireftrm]

As I posted in another area, where a chap who has a new design of line to sell disagrees:

We should be discouraging the use of any such trivial piece of equipment.
They are inherently dangerous, difficult, confusing, outdated, slow, etc.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?

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]

Fireftrm

You never seemed to answer the question that this point raised IE: who is liable if you have to take your gloves off to read the indicators and you injure yourself?

I think it is a very valid point and as I have stated earlier, we should have equipment on appliances that work in conjunction with our PPE.

Maybe the original poster could give us more information relating to their Brigade:-
In my brigade we have guidelines on all appliances but hardly any appliances have PPE ( you cannot search with a TIC, or at least you should not even consider it).

If it was more than ten times cheaper to ensure the brigade had guidelines that worked, rather than PPV on all appliances- which option do you think they would go for?

I do agree with you however that we should have guidelines that work with our PPE, and if this is not the case we should remove them from all appliances immediately before someone is killed using them or not using them as the case may be, and the OIC is hung out to dry, depending on their decision.

We seem to be burying our heads in the sand and saying, - "it'll never happen in our Brigade" and we all know where that gets us.

[fireftrm]

Problem still remains that for as long as we say 'we need nice gloves that allow us to feel guidelines' and 'guidelines are much cheaper therefore we will accept we must use them' we will be responsible for the failure to get improvements. It is our responsibilty to press our respective managements to improve the levels of safety equipment. PPV is much higher up the hierachy of control than PPE. TICs are much more useful and allow movement in smoke-filled environments where PPV cannot easily be used (though these are few and far between). Guidelines are one of the poorest , most dangerous, pieces of equipment we carry. No IC should really consider their use, nor should Ffs accept them.

On the point of 'who is liable' - well the employer ultimately. However, it is the IC who decided to use guidelines and the employees who failed to state, strongly and often enough, that they are inherently dangerous and thus accepted their use. Also knowing the problems actually went ahead and used them on that day - you have a duty not to use dangerous equipment. If we refused to use guidelines maybe notice would be taken. We should be shouting out that they are extremely slow and difficult to lay, cannot be laid in time to save any casualties, are difficult to follow (whether with, or without gloves, old style or Billy's new design) and are an encumberance. Whenever they may be needed then the following should be raised:

PPV removes the smoke
What about the hose you laid to fight the fire - follow that
Guidelines burn, so should not be laid in any area likely to be on fire
TICs allow for visibilty in smoke filled environments
If the building is smokelogged, the fire is under control, there are no saveable casualties (if they are there long enough to be reached by guideline then they are dead) and there is a large complex area - then why commit anyone?
Lastly if all these are answered and you still find a need to go in, with no extra safety measures then maybe, just maybe, and very very carefully, consider using a piece of string to let people find their way about. But beware - people die this way and not the ones already lying dead in the building - if any.

[Billy]

Fireftrm

You still seem to be missing the point here as we have guidelines on appliances that don't work with our gloves- It really is as simple as that!

You state that no IC should consider using guidelines and no FF should accept them- how simplistic you make things sound!

So you turn up to a ship on fire and you decide not to use guidelines as you do a risk assessment and decide they are too dangerous.

2 people are found  1 hour into the incident and one of them dies later in hospital.
 
At the Fatal accident enquiry there will be lawyers on behalf of the owners, the insurance company and also the family of the deceased wanting to apportion blame onto someone.

If they can prove that we never carried out a systematic search as per laid down procedures( which incidently include the use of guidelines under certain circumstances), the brigade could be found liable and so could the Incident Commander.

You could also compound your actions by saying that no one you know would use guidelines because they don't work, and in your words are the "poorest, most dangerous pieces of equipment we carry".

At this point the lawyer would probably ask you if you thought guidelines were so dangerous, how much extra training and familiarisation have you done with them to reduce the risk to your crews?

I suppose you could also say that you never used them because you knew you had no where to secure them.

At which point the owners of the ship would be rubbing their hands and saying that at the last Operational risk assessment the Fire authority never told us of this and if the fire authority were aware of it and done nothing about it, they are liable.

You still have not explained the problem with a guideline that can be quickly and correctly fitted to the building and can be easily read by everyone( and don't say it can burn as hose burns too and so do BA teams)?

In relation to TIC's, I have used them and they only show up differences in temperature and a complex building will still be a complex building with a TIC.

As for you saying that if the building is smokelogged and "the casualties are in there long enough to be reached by the guideline then they are dead" is again very simplistic and I may be mistaken but I thought that at the Kings cross fire, people took shelter, and were rescued from toilets underground well into the incident.

[fireftrm]

Billy

I know you like guidelines, after all you have the better designed one for sale, but hey are not items of equipemnt we should still be using, note that I did say - if you have exhausted ALL the others forms of control use them. So your ship, with no ventilation, no TICs and persons reported may, just may need guidelines. Whether bringing out dead people because we found them off a guideline is really any help is another matter. As to your FAI we would be able to say : we searched using guidelines, yes.

You say:
At this point the lawyer would probably ask you if you thought guidelines were so dangerous, how much extra training and familiarisation have you done with them to reduce the risk to your crews?

I respond - we did some training, but no matter what we could not make it entirely suitable. We also have the following reports showing that the equipment is inherently dangerous and difficult to use, together with identified equipment that would solve these issues and allow us to find casualties quicker, and some that would allow us to make the atmosphere more tenable. We have been asking for these for years, but finance has been unavailable.   - That should get the attention.

That there was nowhere to tie them to? Well the ship owners would be unlikely to be 'rubbing their hands' as we would most likely never have seen their ship before. If we had we would be unlikely to have required them to do anything as they are outside our control. We would be quite explicit in telling the lawyers this. The FRSA would not be liable for the failure to provide tie-off points, or even such information, as we cannot require this of the buildings even where we do carry some legal clout.

TICs do only show differences in temperature and yes a complex building is still a complex building with a TIC, however it is one in which you can 'see'.

Hose burns, yes but it has water flowing through it so it doesn't burn easily. Try the paper cup with water in over a bunsen burner experiment that kids do in primary school for proof. BA teams burn - yes but not easily. String burns easily, indeed too easily.

I do agree that gloves to make guideline use more acceptable are a good idea, but I also think that a suit of armour would be a good idea if you wanted to push your way through a hawthorn hedge. Mind you cutting a way through, or not going through but round would be better still. Don't always make a bad idea better, get a new idea.
[/i]

[Billy]

fireftrm

I think you slightly misunderstand me, as I have used guidelines at incidents and know at first hand the problems we have with them.

The improved marking and tie off points would solve these problems, but I also concede that there should be a better way of searching complex buildings.

You mention TIC's and PPV and I am not naive enough to say that a guideline should be used instead of these methods (if they are available!).

What I am advocating is guidelines that work and also giving solutions to problems with them to ensure that they work when we need them most.

As I said earlier on another thread, if I had a bottomless pit of money and I was in charge of a Fire Authorities budget, I would probably not even have guidelines on appliances!

But CFO's do not have a bottomless pit and they must make do with the budget they are given which also might not stretch to PPV and TIC's on all appliances.

But they do have guidelines on all appliances and the least we can ask for is the guidelines to work.

[fireftrm]

Billy

You misunderstand me too, I agree that the money is not there for all appliances to have PPV and TIC - yet.

What concerns me is that the longer we pursue the guideline, as acceptable to us, the longer service management will provide it and not better equipment.

If this continues the money will  never be freed. Many FRSA have now invested in PPV, there is no reason why others should not. Indeed the HMI said PPV is a more effective risk control measure in a seminar at Tyne&Wear FRS a couple of years ago, we have allowed the FRSAs to not update our safety - we shouldn't.