Playing with fire, Part One

Well, my life is a step further to being complete. I can almost cross off “be a fireman” off... kinda. Although the spirit of the item isn't to just play firefighter for a few days, I'm still doing firefighter-ey things and wearing a firefighter suit. The only difference between what we're wearing in training and what real civvie-side firefighters wear is that theirs is much, much, much easier to work with. You see, the Navy has a different way of providing air to its firefighters. Instead of having a big, fat bottle of air on your back with a hose that connects to your mask, we have a big, fat, heavy, cumbersome, fragile apparatus on our chest. Now, the basics of the apparatus (Chemox A4) are pretty solid and basic, although big, cumbersome, and rather heavy. The problem lies with two “lungs” which basically contain the air the firefighter breathes. Those lungs are some kind of fire-resistant rubberish material and they're very, very pliable. What that means is, while you're going around, if you do any kind of normal human movement or your lungs (the rubber thingies) touch up against anxthing, well, tough luck, you're breathing vacuum. Also, as the Chemox is a closed-circuit apparatus, there is only a limited quantity of air, and if you try to introduce more (if you break the seal on your mask, breath in, and exhale into the mask), well, the air just escapes. That's not a big problem when you're just standing around. It does become a problem when you're going around doing manual labour. Just climbing a ladder, which isn't at all challenging, raises my breath just enough that it starts being a problem. The solution is to slow down your breath and, as you're breathing air that has a high ratio of oxygen, it's not too big a problem and you get your breath back pretty quickly. However, the first time it happens to you (especially if you happen to crush a lung at the same time), it's quite frightening, as you just try to breath in and all that happens is that your mask crunches up on your face. In the dark, with smoke all over, and people yelling stuff (commands, reports, etc), it's freaky.

The bunker gear (the yellow suit you all know from TV) is heavy and hot. It's a lot like wearing a heavy winter suit and a rain suit on top of it. It simply does not breathe—which is a good thing in a fire. After a morning of going around wearing chemox and then doing hose handling with the mask on but no canister plugged in (which means the lungs aren't used), most people were drenched in sweat. It might not have helped that the hose handling was done outside, almost at noon, and the temperature reached 30C today.

It's a lot of fun, though. The only problem is getting dehydrated and losing too many electrolytes. Both are not only dangerous, they're annoying as hell. I like the whole deal a lot, and I really hope the live-fire exercise will be as cool as I expect it to be. After all, what can be cooler than going around in firefighting gear and fighting real fires? (Ok, “meeting” the Olsen twins would be a close second)

All I need to do now is get my Navy behind on a calendar, and my life will truly be complete. (Not really.)

I'll try and finally post a few things on flood training and all that, but I'm tired right now.