SCBA Inspection & Maintenance Program Initiated

By 2nd Lt. George L. Males, ET241

In the past several months there has been a noticeable amount of activity with regards to part of our personal protective equipment, the SCBA, and you are probably wondering why. In a word, “standardization”.

Every piece of equipment that we use is touched in someway by the standards that are issued by the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association). In particular, there are 3 standards: NFPA 1404, NFPA 1500 and NFPA 1981 that apply to the SCBA in whole or in part.

How all this relates to our department is simply to standardize our methods of checking, documenting and maintaining our SCBA. The inspection checklist forms we used in the past were whatever a company had put together, so the information recorded could vary. The regularity of inspection could vary as well. The standard now is weekly and after each use. After each use doesn’t mean turning on the air and donning the SCBA, it means actual use. The checklist form is standard for all companies. The only departure from these 2 forms (the yellow colored Weekly Inspection and the pink colored After Each Use) will be another inspection form being developed by the Tower and Truck Companies for their own aerial air supply cascade systems.

To standardize our program we also had to inventory each SCBA unit and all cylinders. We had to do this so that we could track what we have, identify each SCBA unit by a department ID number, log each piece (both SCBA unit and cylinder) into a computer base and from this base maintain an on-going record of all maintenance. Individual SCBA unit records will be kept by Unit alpha-numeric ID.

Please note, as company captains have been advised, once a SCBA unit is retired, so is the Unit ID. This is to maintain record integrity of that individual unit.

SCBA REPAIRS

Some other SCBA related activities now and into the future. Our department is now doing SCBA Field Level Maintenance and Repairs to our SCOTT SCBA’s. Three individuals in the department were certified by SCOTT to perform these tasks, they are Bill Graugard, Steve Scanlon and George Males. Please note, only these individuals are authorized by the Executive Board to do any repairs, regardless of how minor the repair or adjustment may be. (As an example: Any loose screw on the facepiece shield should not be re-tightened. The entire screw and nut assembly must be replaced.) Any questions please contact George Males.

Note, we will only do in-house repairs on SCOTT Airpacs. We will not do any repairs to the remaining SURVIVAIR SCBA. If these SURVIVAIR units breakdown, they will be taken out of service. Please note, once repairs have been completed to your SCBA equipment, the person identified on the repair tag will be contacted.

SCBA IN “READY” POSITION

Should the facepiece assembly and the facepiece regulator be attached together while being stored in the “Ready” position? According to SCOTT Aviation, they make no preference, nor give any advisory against this practice. I verified this with a SCOTT technician at their home office.

One practice though that should be followed, is to keep both the facepiece and facepiece regulator protected from contamination while being stored on the fire apparatus within their own storage bags. Remember, you are breathing air from this unit, so keep it as clean as possible.

SCBA MAINTENANCE ROOM

Station 641 will be the new location for the SCBA Maintenance Room. At the present time all SCBA related maintenance and repair work and equipment to be worked upon is to be dropped off at Station 241 until the new quarters are ready at Station 641. For the present time, all SCBA vendors have been advised and will drop off and pick up at Station 241.

SCOTT TECHNICAL ADVISORIES

From time to time, we will receive technical bulletins from SCOTT advising us of possible problems with our SCBA’s. This information will be provided to each company captain to advise all company personnel. It is vitally important that this information gets through, as our lives depend upon our equipment.

Some examples of past bulletins from SCOTT:

• Replacement of black headharness webbing which holds the facepiece in place, with Kevlar type webbing, as the black headharness material failed when exposed to high levels of heat. [Our department is replacing all facepiece assemblies with the new AV2000 model or replacing the headharness entirely with the Kevlar headharness.]

• Replacement of backframe black poly harness with Kevlar type harness. As above, the black colored harness failed when subjected to high levels of heat. [The only SCOTT units that may have the black backframe harness are the SCOTT IIA’s. These older units will be replaced in the near future with the new SCOTT 4.5’s.]

LAST BREATH

It is recognized that all companies want to easily identify their equipment, especially at a large fire scene when equipment from everywhere seems to go everywhere. How many times have you gone looking for stuff at a scene after you are tired and just want to go back to the station? That is one of the other reasons why the Unit ID’s were developed. However, some other marking practices must stop. Examples are: painting air bottles or spray painting harness.

SCOTT Aviation uses a special type and color paint for it’s bottles for a reason, don’t change it. And as far as the practice of spray painting any part of the SCBA, this practice could cause damage or render the SCBA useless.