Tech Advice #5 - Long Duration SCBA

[Aussie_Fire]

Good evening Team,

I had a question for all you FDNY Guru's out there. This is in relation to long duration SCBA. I was wondering what you use for long duration SCBA operations. i would imagine a standard BA cylinder would not suffice for highrise operations and i wondered what you use in that space. Do you use twin cylinders? or do you use COBA (Compressed Oxygen Breathing Apparatus - rebreather) sets?

For underground operations over in Aus, we use rebreathers which have a 4 hour wearing duration. This is standard and required by our regulations for any underground mine. They are expensive $16,000 AUD per unit and require significant maintenance (pure oxygen and soda lime along with a cooling gel canister to cool the breathing loop).
Our standard SCBA have a compressed air cylinder of 6.8L (hydro capacity) which give us about 30-40 mins of air for working duration (plus 10min safety margin at whistle).
Its very very rare that we would use a double yolk twin 6.8L Cylinders its either 1 cylinder or a rebreather. i have heard of old school sets where departments could use twin 9L cylinders but i think this was phased out once rebreathers became prominent.
Our 6.8L cylinders are carbon fiber wrapped aluminum. They replaced our steel cylinders about 25 years ago and are about 33% lighter than steel. in the last 5 years we have now seen the Nano tech cylinders which are lighter again roughly 47% lighter than steel cylinders.

I was interested to hear what is used in the big apple.

Hope all is well up there team.
Cheers
Jess

 

[Captain784]

The FDNY has a Rebreather Unit that can respond with Rebreather Masks, that I believe can last up to 4 Hours. I do not believe that the Rebreathers our used in most High-rise Fires. The Rebreathers are used more for unusual fires like, Ship, Major Subway or Transit Tunnel Fires. Deep fires in Subcellars. etc. Rescue and squad Companies and certain other units are trained in the use of rebreather masks. I worked in Manhattan's 1st and 3rd Division. the High-rise Capital of the World. It was often standard procedures that units reporting into the Command Post, or Staging Area with each officer and firefighter, carrying one spare SCBA bottle. When you got your orders to move up to the fire floor or to a secondary command post, usually 2 floors below the lowest fire floor. You would leave the extra SCBA bottle in a designated spot, so you retrieve your extra SCBA when needed. Over the years the FDNY has had regular Scott SCBA bottle in sizes of :30 minute, :45 minute, and 60 Minute size bottles. By the 1990s my unit Engine 26 rode with :45-minute SCBA Bottles. In all those years I went to many serious fires but only about a dozen or so serious Commercial High-rise fires. The fires in High-rise residential and some Hotel buildings were a lot more common. I can vividly remember running low on SCBA air while we were, searching in High Rise Hotels and some residential buildings. Photo below is of a luxury high rise residential @ 1 Lincoln Center near the Lincoln Central performing art complex. We had a horrendous fire involving the apartment of the Jazz Great Lionel Hampton. It developed into a very severe Wind Driven "Wrong way Fire" when the windows broke from the heat and the apartment door being left open, allowing a Very Strong fire and strong wind to incinerate the large apartment, and the public hallways in this very sizable. large building.
It was the worse High-Rise fires I had in my many years with FDNY.
Captain Bob Rainey FDNY Engine 26 retired

 

[Aussie_Fire]

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your response. I had a suspiscion that you may use rebreathers for special operations but wasn't sure if it was the case. It makes sense that you would use them in subways/tunnels and the like. That is probably one of the closest enviroments to and underground mine i would imagine. Loads of tunnels and intersections i would imagine makes mapping ventilation very difficult unless you have vent doors and remote controlled ventilation fans/points (apologies i'm not overly familaur with subway engineering.

Interesting to note that you refer to your 'bottles' (we get push ups if we say bottles not Cylinders!!) by working duration time and not by volumetric size. Its not a bad way of doing things, it simplyfies things.
Our method is to do the calculations each time we pick up a set. I'm not sure why we do it that way, perhaps its qite common for the pressure in each Cylinder to fluctuate as much as 30-40 bar. (apologies i'm not sure if you use metric or imperial system for SCBA, i think 1 bar is 14.7 PSI from memory, we use metric system).
The calcualtion is volumetric or hydro capacity for the cyclinder (mostly 6.8L) multiplied by charge pressure (max is suposed to be 300 Bar)
6.8 * 300 = 2040 Liters of uncompressed air. We then apply Dr Haladanes table/principle which is the magic number of 40 (average liters of air consumtion by aver person, average fitness, average work load, average ambient temperature etc)
2040/40 = 51mins of total air or Full Duration, minus our 10 min safety margine give us a 41 minute Working Duration.
Simply put
VC * CP = total uncompressed air
TUA/40 = FD
FD-10SM = WD

Thank you for sharaing your experience Bob, I appreciate you taking the time to share those photo's also. It really puts things in perspective.

All the best.
Jess

 

[Captain784]

Jess It is great to hear from our brothers and sisters down under. I have been part of the FDNY for over 50 years. I was appointed to FDNY on Jan. 27, 1973, and was a Firefighter/Fire Officer until my retirement as the captain=Company Commander, of Engine 26, just south of Times Square Midtown Manhattan. Engine 26 was and is, a Special High Rise Engine Company that had a 3 Stage Pump and special hose, to supply high pressure to Standpipe systems in High Rise Buildings, in cases where the building fire pumps had failed or were inoperative. Engine 26 has responded to between 5,000 and to over 5,500 Responses, per year for a long time. I still work for the FDNY as a Peer Counselor for the Counseling Services Unit = C.S.U. and the World Trade Center Health Care Program. I am also an active Department Safety Officer with the Chester N.Y. Volunteer Fire Dept.
Below is a 4th alarm fire in an abandoned feather factory, when I was a firefighter in Tower Ladder 18 on Manhattan's Lower East Side, in the 1970s, I am the one on the left of the photo operating the controls of the Tower Ladder "basket",.
Chester New York is about 50 miles northwest of N.Y. City. Bob Rainey FDNY Captain Engine 26 retired. 

 

[Aussie_Fire]

Hi Bob,
Great the hear back from you. i always look forwrard to your replies especially given the wealth of knowledge and experience you are able to empart over such a long and decorated career in the service. It clear to see that you are very passionate and dedicated to the service of others and even while retired you still are very enaged in the happenings and craft of fire and rescue. While we do some thing a little different this side of the equator, the goal is the same 'Save life, protect property and render humanitarian assistance'.
I do have a confession to make, i looked up Engine 26. 37th st fondly known if i'm not mistaken as the 'Batcave'. It made me smile as i'm a huge Batman fan so it resonated with me when i saw a few pictures of the station and the fire appliance. I'm not sure if there is a story behind that, you would care to share or if that naming came after your time, regardless i thought it was great.
I loved the picture you included in your last post in the tower from decades ago. We only have two ladders in our state. Perth, the captial city only has about 2M people so its not big compared to a global scale.
5000+ jobs a year is huge. Me personally i probably would have turned out to maybe 50-100 per year at most. However as we are private we only look after the mine sites. which could be as little as 120 people on a small site and up to 2000 on a big site. Because the australian outback is so vast the mining company will build its own closed little village/town that only houses the workers. They fly them in for a week then fly them home for a week of leave. The best way i could describe it is like a small military base. no family just the workers theres a mess hall for food, gym, a bar and the accommodation. The ESO's (fire fighters) only look after that minesite asset. However if there is a car crash on the open road nearby we will assist but the mine is normally hours from anywhere so not much happens outside the mine. I included a picture below of what a minsite accomodation looks like. Then there is a site where they do the active mining and thats where the incidents happen.

I noted you mentioned that you had a 3 stage pump? what sort of volume and pressure does that move? it must be incredibly powerful to act as a booster/standpipe replacement?
How do your pumps work? i'm assuming you use a PTO? i'm not sure if you call it the same thing. Basically the pump is powered by the engine of the appliance. so park up, in neutral and engage the power to the pump and control the revs from there? Our state use this for urban fire fighting. in mining in the private sector we mainly have what we call 'Pump and roll' which means the fire water pump as a seperate motor so we can still drive the appliance (wildfire) and fight fire from water montitors onboard.
This is an aviation appliance built for a global iron ore producer. The water monitor on the roof is joystick controlled from the cab. This would probably carry about 6 ton of water and about 300-400 liters of foam concertrate. Apologies i haven't got a pic of the pump control panel, i should have snapped one.

Well Bob, great chatting as always. I'm flying out to a fire and rescue competition this afternoon for the weekend back monday so i will be offline for a few days. We hold these once a year where minesites submit a team and they compete over the weekend in each discipline.

1. Fire Fighting
2. SCBA Skills
3. HAZMAT
4. Rope Rescue
5. Road Crash Rescue
6. Confined Space Rescue
7. First Aid
8. Theory

I'm working on the fire fighting event as adjudicator, so i will be judging the new fellars coming through the ranks. I stopped competing 15 years ago (i'm 39yrs old) its more for the younger people coming through. its good fun with plenty of opportunity to empart a bit of knowledge to the new generation and yes, enjoy many beers on the awards night on the sunday!!

I'll try to get some pictures of the competition to share. It's being held at a gold mine and they do get a little bit funny about taking pictures on gold mines (security risk) but normally it's ok with the competitions.

All the best Bob.
Jess