- Author
-
Hill, S. A.
|
Scheffey, J. L.
|
Farley, J. P.
|
Williams, F. W.
- Title
- Results of the 1996 Firefighting and Damage Control Equipment Evaluation Tests (SCBA).
- Coporate
- Hughes Associates, Inc., Baltimore, MD
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
- Report
-
NRL/MR/6180-97-7936,
March 31, 1997,
135 p.
- Keywords
-
self contained breathing apparatus
|
fire fighting
|
damage control
|
ships
|
shipboard fires
|
large scale fire tests
|
fire fighters
|
Class A fires
|
fuel load
|
ventilation systems
|
protective equipment
|
relief valves
- Identifiers
- Oxygen Breathing Apparatus (OBA); NFPA 1981
- Abstract
- A series of full-scale fire tests was conducted to evaluate the proposed self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) when used by firefighters to combat Class A fire scenarios. Based on the comments made by the test participants, it appeared that the majority of the participants preferred the SCBA over the OBA. Specifically, the participants preferred wearing the SCBA on the back, with a portion of the unit's weight being distributed to the hips, as opposed to wearing the OBA on the chest. The participants also stated that, due to the fact that the SCBA was on their backs, the SCBA allowed for greter mobility than the OBA. During the test series, several of the participants experienced problems with their mask-mounted voice amplifiers, such as feedback and inoperable amplifiers. Due to the size of the firefighting gloves, the bypass relief valve and the regulator release tabs on the SCBA masks were extremely difficult for the firefighters to manipulate while wearing gloves.