By Evan Belanger
The Decatur Daily, Ala.
DECATUR, Ala. — As Decatur fire officials sought to purge their department of equipment they say is faulty and dangerous, the manufacturer of that equipment sought to defend itself last week.
In an interview with The Daily, company spokesman Bill Sokol said chronic failures reported by Decatur fire officials of the fire department’s Panther-model breathing units manufactured by California-based Survivair were not the result of any design flaw.
“We’ve been doing business with Decatur Fire and Rescue since 1998,” he said.
“We’ve had a very good run over those 11 years in terms of performance and safety.”
While Sokol said the department had reported problems with its equipment, he said the devices were not defective and investigations by the company had not detected any problems.
Firefighters use the devices, known as Self-Contained Breath Apparatus or SCBAs, to breathe when they enter burning buildings.
Sokol is vice president of marketing for Sperian Protection, which owns the Survivair brand.
His statement came after Decatur fire officials told the City Council last week they needed new breathing devices.
They told the council a design flaw in the Survivair facemask causes a valve to stick shut. While the valve is supposed to allow the user to exhale, they said, the user cannot breathe once it is closed.
But Sokol claimed the fire officials were exaggerating the problem and said even if the valve stuck closed, the user would still be able to breathe.
He called the problem “inconvenient” and “annoying” at worst.
“You can find people in the fire service who don’t like any products and will speak out against any products, our competitors included,” he said.
But Decatur officials said Sokol’s statements simply were not true.
“I’ll just flat tell you that you can’t breathe when that valve sticks closed,” said Lt. Craig Corum, president of the local firefighters union.
Corum said he was not surprised by Sokol’s comments because Sperian cannot admit its equipment is faulty while it fights a $27 million wrongful-death suit.
Corum, who is certified to rebuild the breathing devices, testified about chronic problems with the masks in a 2007 lawsuit against Survivair.
In that case, the family of a fallen St. Louis firefighter claimed a faulty Panther-model breathing unit contributed to the firefighter’s death at a 2002 fire. The jury agreed, awarding the family $27 million.
The company is appealing the decision, claiming the jury did not get to see all of the evidence.
The family of another St. Louis firefighter who died in the same blaze also sued, but the parties reached a confidential settlement.
According to Decatur’s fire chief, Charlie Johnson, the city department took due diligence before deciding the masks needed to be replaced.
He told the City Council last week that the department worked for years with Survivair to correct the problem without success. He said the fire department investigated cleaning issues and other possible causes, and that it even replaced most of the regulators, but the problem continued, with 23 documented failures since 2007.
Corum estimated the department suffers at least one mask failure per shift.
Johnson told the council that his firefighters no longer have confidence in the equipment and that it needs to be replaced.
Sokol named eight other fire departments in Alabama that he said use the Survivair equipment without problems, including Birmingham and Hoover.
He also said most complaints about all SCBAs concern the valve in question, and that 95 percent of the time it’s related to cleaning and maintenance issues.
Copyright 2009 The Decatur Daily