My confined space challenge. A true story from my volunteer days. By Roger J Lown.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

My confined space challenge. A true story from my volunteer days. By Roger J Lown.

My crew and I from fire station 3 boarded the fire district van where we were headed to the county fire-training center. With our selected team of interior firefighters along with our lieutenant we were on our way to improve our firefighting skills. The class known as mask confidence and firefighter survival was one part class study and the other hands on training at the center. Mask confidence training is learning to work with your breathing apparatus and how use to its versatility when conditions turn bad in fire.

              We arrived and were instructed on what our tasks would be; using our air breathing packs to perform various rescue maneuvers. That evening we would face challenges and conquer our fears and learn something about ourselves we never knew.

It was my turn to crawl through one of the hurdles: a large drain page, which I had just enough room for me to crawl with my gear and pack. I informed the instructor that I might have an issue with claustrophobia. He explained that I would be on breathing air and that if I experienced difficulty staff could pull me out. My mask is covered so that no daylight can enter. I am totally dependent on my hands to feel out my enclosed space. I crawl to what feels like a circular opening. The instructor inquires, “What do you have?” I reply, “some sort of opening’ he prompts, “It’s your only way out go through it. From my class training I learned to adjust my straps and slide my air pack off my back and place it in front of me as I enter what appears to my senses to be a small tunnel. I have just enough room to push my air pack through ahead of me inch by inch as I crawl slowly breathing my air. If you recall how Darth Vader breathes, that is what I sounded like “on air” as we say in the service. The PVC drain pipe used at the training center was about ten to fifteen feet long if I remember correctly.

I made it through just fine and learned how to control my breathing. It’s all about remaining calm in an alarming situation. My confidence was strengthened that evening. I learned other maneuvers such as how to make an escape exit when your low air vibralert goes off and you have limited time. You slide your pack to the side and take your axe and iron bar known in the service as a halligan bar feel a space in between two studs in the wall. Then you literally break through the wall.

              I learned that day what my fear was and how to work through it. To this day I still have claustrophobia with confined spaces. But I can perform the emergency exit while on breathing air equipment. Another challenge we faced in the firefighter survival course was called the “hot bottle change”. You are in a multi story building, let say the eighth floor and the vibralert alarm on your air breathing apparatus vibrates indicating your are low on air. You may not have enough breathing air to get to the ground floor for fresh air. You need a fresh full breathing air bottle right now in the acrid smoky floor you’re on. A fellow firefighter brings a spare air bottle and now you must perform a hot bottle change blindly in a dark smoky room. While you are breathing the last of the low air bottle you take one deep breath of air and while holding it you blindly unscrew the low air bottle, open the valve on the new full air bottle and screw the air hose onto the valve of the new bottle. Then you release what’s left of your old breath you held in your lungs and breathe air from the fresh air bottle. And that’s called the hot bottle change. It is not easy, in fact it is very intense and nerve racking however it can be done and I did performed it once in the firefighter survival course and passed.     

               It is a good tip to know in a desperate breathing situation where your air low, your conditions are deteriorating, smoke etc and the next breath could be your last on the tank, then you take your mask off and you succumb to smoke inhalation. A hot bottle change could save a firefighters life but I wouldn’t want to make it a habit at every fire scene.  

This story is from my eBook shown below, now available on Amazon.