J
jollyjacktar
Guest
I don't know what would be worse. No gloves, that suit or the convection action on the noggin of all that metal in the helmet in the fire. ouch. :evil:
Scott said:Finally, on duration, most of the SCBAs on market now have a max duration of 60 minutes. Yes, that is limiting, but cylinders are cheap, relatively and anyone can be trained to run a compressor or cascade. In fact, I am pretty sure some of the sisters to our huge Jordairs are in the dockyard.
Oldgateboatdriver said:But at sea, it is more than limiting, Scott.
Regardless of how cheap they are, there is a limit to how many cylinders you can have onboard a warship. If you have had a chance to sail on a destroyer or frigate, then you know how much stuff we already pack in every nook and cranny.
Then, you don't necessarily have the personnel to spend a lot of time on reload.
On a frigate in the middle of fight, about 120 of your 225 personnel will be involved with fighting the ship, be it watching over some sensor or actually operating the weapons systems. Out of the 100 or so left, you have about 20 involved in running all the propulsion and machinery spaces and keeping track of the damage control/stability situation at the same time, so you are down to about 80 for first aid, fire fighting and damage control. That may seem a lot but not if after a hit you have to stop flooding in one or two compartment, fight a major fire while re-establishing power to an essential weapons system, such as the CWIS, because the sonovab***h airplane who did this is getting lined up for another pass, the whole while trying to evacuate about 15 casualties from the area hit and provide them with first aid.
having to over-rotate your personnel involved with the fire in such circumstances and spending time you don't really have on reloading the empties, is not necessarily something you can do.
The French navy have a backpack style breathing apparatus that gives them between two and three hours of air and recharge in five, so the materiel exists that can do it, and MSA has a four hour pack breathing apparatus. That's all I am saying.
Oldgateboatdriver said:Good to known Scott.
I was told differently when I was on exchange on the French mine hunter Pégase. But that was from the petty officer I was questioning on the equipment, so he was obviously misinformed or plain wrong.
Navy_Pete said:In practical terms, we carry enough bottles that if you are at the point where you need to refill them to keep teams going to fight a big fire you aren't doing anything else. At that point you have people dedicated to doing nothing but refilling the bottles, which you do when you swap the bunker gear for a new person. It's really not that big a deal to remove it from the pack, although it is fidgety if you don't do it often.
The other big change is that there is no hesitation to use the fitted system and it's drilled into everyone that's the first thing they do, and they don't need permission for a confirmed fire to use it. That's different than the 'gung ho hero' attitude I was taught a decade ago where you would save the halon, CO2, AFFF etc for when company comes over or something. With the fine water mist systems or some of the halon replacements its a lot more widely available anyway, but it's been recognized (the hard way) that the heat and smoke that will rapidly fill a space is much worse for electronics fitted in sealed boxes than some sprinkler water or AFFF. So your first team should be doing checks for casualties for evacuation and making sure it's contained, vice fighting a raging fire, if it was in a space with a fitted system.
Scott said:Hell, I just did a quick search for Drager in Canada and it appears they "might" have a service centre somewhere in Nova Scotia, but it also shows "authorized service partners" The trap that I see having been sprung was that of purchase and service married together. It's a fallacy. The difference between Drager servicing a Drager set and AGI servicing something from MSA is minimal, at best.
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Chief Stoker said:Drager does have an service center in Burnside in Halifax.