My department responded to a barn fire recently that flattened a building filled with tractors, fuel, and assorted equipment and paraphernalia found around a farm.
It produced a lot of acrid smoke and, of course, the engine I was operating was upwind of the fire, getting bathed in that toxic concoction of particulates, volatile organic compounds, and what I like to call methyl ethyl bad stuff.
Days later, the station and the engine still had some of that unmistakable and all-too-familiar fragrance of a structure fire. Every firefighter on the planet knows that smell. It’s undeniable.
As the son of a volunteer fire chief in a small New Hampshire town, I spent a lot of time in a fire station 50 years ago as a kid, and that smell was part of that station then as it is now. It’s an almost comforting aroma that in a way reminds me of my dad. It’s a “good smell.” With diesel fumes, gasoline vapors, and a litany of other odors, the air of a fire station is intoxicatingly toxic while at the same time nostalgic, at least to me.
Decades ago, we had no idea how bad that smell was for our health. The off-gassing of turnout gear and the apparatus interiors as well as the particulates on the floor and in the buildings of our stations were, and still are, deadly. Don’t forget it wasn’t that long ago that self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) were stored in cases in cabinets on apparatus and only pulled out for the really bad calls. Firefighters routinely hacked up and snorted out black soot from their lungs. It was the nature of the beast. Where do you think the term “smoke eater” comes from?
After innumerable cancer cases and tragic deaths from respiratory illnesses, people started to get smart and figured out we needed to do more to protect ourselves from smoke and soot that caused illnesses.
Equipment to remove exhaust from stations became more prevalent in the fire service and, heaven forbid, we actually started talking about washing our gear. It was no longer the cool or macho thing to have blackened, crusty turnout coats and charred helmets. I remember every time I got new gear, there would be the inevitable hazing of being labeled the rookie again. I am about to get another set of gear soon, my third, and this time I can’t wait to retire my old set that’s ladened with who knows what that could be killing me.
As the science advances, and we learn more about the stuff in smoke and the environment in which we work, manufacturers are stepping up their game to protect us from dangers we face every day. Systems to clean the air in our cabs are now becoming readily available and easy to use with replaceable filters, and every apparatus maker can have them installed in the rig. Some systems can be retrofitted into existing apparatus.
The same technology is offered for protection in our fire stations. Filtration systems are now routinely being added in areas where gear is stored and in living quarters. And, as the last two-plus years have taught us, there are real threats in aerosolized viruses, and air filtration is more important than ever.
New stations are being designed with zones to isolate contaminated gear and equipment from living quarters, protecting us from harmful carcinogens.
Smoke has always been bad for us, whether we realized it or not, but the materials that burn today are even worse. There are no longer just legacy materials burning in structures. Wood, cotton, wool, and other “natural” products have been replaced with plastics of all varieties and man-made products with names few of us can pronounce. When that stuff burns, it’s all released, becoming airborne hazards for all its flow paths.
Fortunately, we have products and equipment that can protect us from the hazards of each “burner” we face. The fire service needs to embrace the science and the technology and develop standard operating guidelines (SOGs) to effectively use the available equipment. More importantly, we need the intestinal fortitude to enforce the SOGs that are meant to protect us. We need to make sure we use our SCBA during overhaul when the worst of the smoke is produced from incomplete combustion.
We need to use the gross decontamination equipment to remove as much of the contamination from our gear at the scene as possible. We need to routinely wash our gear, in accordance with manufacturers’ recommendations, and we need to install air-scrubbing equipment in our apparatus and stations.
We can no longer tolerate complacency when it comes to our respiratory health. Changing our old ways and checking our nostalgia for familiar smells and crusty looks will be the breath of fresh air we all need.
