1. Probies in the Truck

2. Venting Gases

Question: You mentioned that there were nine lighter-than-air gases to be considered in "odor-of-gas" incidents without fire on arrival requiring ventilation. The behavior of these gases would dictate nonvertical ventilation. Vertical ventilation would lend to their explosive limits being reached near a source of ignition. I think I've found a few, but am not sure. Could you give them to me or point me in the right direction to find them. Thank you.

Answer: Okay, if it is the right direction you must go, turn back to START and DO NOT PASS GO. You have two halves of the information, and they have no connection (if I am reading your letter correctly). The main point here is that the rule is very simple and can help while the "VEST" system gets more refined data on the unknown. The problem posed is a response to a structure wherein there is reported an escaping and collecting gaseous product or a spill emitting a gaseous product. Do you vertically ventilate the structure as routine while identifying product and removing exposures (humans)? If the product is equal to or heavier than air, you do not want to chance vertical ventilation as the entrained air and currents will thin out the mixture that may or may not be in the explosive range. Venting may put it there! If the product is lighter than air, then open the vertical barriers and allow it to escape to outer air.

My remarks were meant to be a guide for those first arrivers. What are the chances of the gas in question being lighter than air? There are only nine lighter-than-air gases — two of which are inert anyway so open for them vertically. The trick would be to remember those, in case they are identified on arrival. Again, remember also that most gases on earth are heavier than or equal to the weight of air. With these, the rule is simply: DON'T OPEN VERTICALLY.  Like all things in this business that need to be recalled from memory, you need an acronym guide. Mine is AH HA MINCE. Ammonia, Hydrogen, Helium, Acetylene, Methane (sewer gas and flatulence!) Iluminating Gas (old folks know it so; today it is natural gas), Nitrogen, Carbon Monoxide and Ethane. So there you have it! Now work on positioning the truck.

Take care brother. Write again soon.

Question: I'm a new member of an FDNY truck company. I have less than a year on the job but have been a volunteer for 8 years. I can guess how you feel about probies in the truck, but, for what it's worth, I've been "in the books" since I became a firefighter. And I'm constantly observing my senior men. Which brings me to my question. Between us, how do you feel about the use of "cheaters" and "bite-bars" and the like?

Answer: Brother, thanks for taking the time to write an ol' broken-down truckie. I am writing two versions of my remarks to your statements. One for "Nuggets" and one for just you (I hope). First, you state that you know how I feel about probies in the truck companies! Nothing could be further from the truth! Dealing day to day with more than two probationary type firefighters in a busy truck could be a dilemma for sure. And that is with four other firefighters. If you get to four firefighters and an officer, the probationary assignments get critical. The one that will suffer is the secondary objectives of the outside team and the partner for the chauffeur. But with roll calls, daily and nightly drills in the station and outside, critiques of everything at the scene of the operation, the "proby" appearance will disappear in a little as three months — at least if you work for me! One of the reasons is your welfare! Probationary (in my day) meant just that! They could fire you for any reason under the sun, and they certainly did not have to "carry" you after unfortunate injuries. But I always thought that I could train a "rubber traffic cone" and would welcome the opportunity. One of the benefits to having a proby assigned is it gives all the members an excuse to find interest in the basics of firefighting. They believe that it is "all right" to drill on them as long as a proby is in the house. (They all have the interest but believe that it is too basic to show.) It is amazing to find out the amount of time the "complaining" firefighter typically has on the job — usually the "old-timer" has all of four years!  Now for the cheaters. They were adaptors for the Scott regulator of the original 4.5 mask assemblies. They came out of an excellent Brooklyn truck in the early '70s and were refined by a  very experienced light-duty firefighter. For those of us who were "all of a sudden" ordered to use masks all the time, it was a great alternative — only because we did not train with the mask all the time. Our results without them were excellent, and we had enough fires to think we could tell the difference of when to take the assembly and when not to. (That was kind of bunk too, now that I look back on it.) Today, however,  there is no excuse for not being great with the mask assembly on. The firefighters that were not around in the '70s don't have a clue as to what the cheaters were, why they were valuable to some, what they were for, and what their value in the face of adversity was. You should practice being so used to a mask assembly that it is just like your helmet and turnout coat — part of the "firefighting" YOU. Remember how cumbersome the coats and the bunker pants and the boots were? How unbalanced the helmet was during probationary school? They were fun to put on but a pain to wear while you "ran out of breath" doing proby school stuff. If you didn't run out of air, you didn't have any kind of real training during that time. It is like the brother complaining about having to perform inspection duty and EMS procedures and other non-fire activities. Your job has become to help anyone who asks you to do anything. (Actually that was always the case.) But the short story is: it was part of the job when you took the job; get used to it; get great at it; and get on with the profession and your life (not you — the guy complaining). So, get rid of the cheaters (they should be gone by now), and become a great firefighter in the mask assembly. Sure, I used the cheater and was good at it (I had one of the first few created), but I wish I had the time to get used to a mask and dump the cheaters earlier. We thought (foolishly) that we could tell when and when not to take the SCBA off the truck — nonsense today, and really nonsense yesterday. At the "too-short end of my career,"  I had both and was getting my wish. We were using the mask all the time and were not "missing" a thing (in our minds eye). Fire Engineering magazine came along too early in my career, I guess. Let me reiterate: your job in truck work is to get great at everything you do. Fire clothing should become like pajamas, hydraulic tools like scissors, power saws like jig saws, building roofs like your own backyard; ladders and ladder positions should be assessed and placed like .they were from a toy Tonka Truck; and mask assemblies as if they were inside your chest as a second set of lungs. Write back for sure, when you can

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Write if you agree or don’t agree or on anything. Tbrennan@firenuggets.com

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