The Town of Vernon Fire Department made a commitment to provide safe and reliable Self Contained Breathing Apparatus

The Town of Vernon Fire Department made a commitment to provide safe and reliable Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) for its members. With this objective in minds, a thorough review of all SCBA was done. The review resulted in the following actions being taken:

Education of all members on the use and maintenance of the SCBA.
Train key members to service SCBA equipment.
Establish a department wide SCBA program of inventory and regular inspection.
Build a repair shop and equip it with SCBA tools and supplies.
Build an automated tracking system for inventory of all SCBA equipment and its maintenance records.

Constant feedback to the Chief for purposes of budgeting, improvements to be made and ready information of equipment in use or to be retired from service.

The program is still a work in progress however, within the three plus years of work, our department has a program it can be proud of and is a model for other departments to use.

The following articles are written to keep the membership aware of what is going on from purchases of new equipment to safety issues that may be issued by SCOTT Aviation or industry bureaus, such as NIOSH or OSHA. Our department’s newsletter, the Vernon Fire website is widely read by members and non-members, and because of this, it contributes greatly to the continuing education of its readers.

George Louis Males

SCBA Coordinator

SCBA Corner Archives- Articles featured in the 41 Repeater.

SCBA Inspection & Maintenance Program Initiated (August 1998)
SCBA Update - New Disinfectant from SCOTT (November 1998)
SCBA Facepiece Alert (March 1999)
SCBA Facepiece Corrective Lenses (June 1999)
SCBA Drills - Weekly Inspections - Cylinder Hydrostatic Testing (August 1999)
SCBA New Equipment (December 1999)
SCBA Safety Alerts (May 2000)
SCBA Bottle Conversion - Good Bye 2.2 - Hello 4.5! (October 2000)
Cylinder Inventory (April 2001)