Pocket Maintenance
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
Maintenance schedules, common in fire departments, can run the gamut from annual, quarterly or monthly checks to weekly or daily checks.
Although the quality of maintenance can differ greatly among departments, all maintenance usually involves equipment in which the department has monetary interest. Periodic examination of clothing, helmets and boots should also be part of fire departments’ maintenance programs.
However, there is still one area of maintenance that is never talked about—the fire fighters’ personal equipment. The equipment he always has or doesn’t have on his person at every fire.
As we rise to an obvious structural fire, we are fraught with anticipation. Coats buckled? Boots pulled up? SCBA donned? A quick check of nozzles and tools. Are we ready? Look for the gloves. Missing? Borrowed again? Is finding them like trying to unroll crumpled metal, stiffened from water and plaster from the last worker?
What else is in those pockets we may need? Check our personal flashlight. Click. Off. Click. Off.
The point we are trying to make is that when the chips are down, some of the most basic and useful fire equipment, those things that the fire fighter always depends on, always carries, usually goes unchecked for long periods.
What else should we examine for? Regularly, at the change of tours, or on a weekly basis, look for the chocks, screw drivers, pliers and vise grips, so vital in all areas of fire fighting. Are they where they should be? Do they operate? The knife. Is it useful, available and workable? Its need in extrication, rescue, overhauling, etc., is only too obvious.
One of the most overlooked pieces of personal equipment a fire fighter should have is a strong piece of 25-foot nylon rope. An old instructor of mine used to say, “If I had to enter a fire building for search purposes and could only carry one piece of equipment, it would be 25 feet of good quality rope.” It is the only piece of equipment that can get you into the building and back out again, as a guide for search from the fire door and back again. In emergencies, rope makes that 10-foot drop to the ground much easier to take. Tools, hose, equipment are hauled easily on the outside of the building. Bulkheads are held open, dangerous areas in the building roped off, horizontal venting from above the fire becomes an absolute only because of this rope’s presence.
On return to quarters, do we take the time to check our personal supplies in our pockets? Replace used or damaged equipment? Wash, dry and re-stow gloves and rope?
And don’t forget to complete your mental maintenance check on one of the most important pieces of fire fighting equipment— you!
