By Cameron K. Mabry,
Daily Mississippian
Copyright 2007 Daily Mississippian via U-Wire
OXFORD, Miss. — While sitting and chatting with fellow firefighters, 24-year-old Adam Patton hears the alarm, alerting him and the others on duty of a building fire on the northwest side of Oxford, Miss.. As the fire truck rushes through town, Patton said he reflects back and finds comfort in the tedious preparation of his equipment, but new studies released by the National Fire Protection Association report that he may not be as prepared for the dangers of his job as he thought.
Recently, the National Fire Protection Association announced it has developed a revised version of the 1982 NFPA Standard on the Personal Alert Safety System device that operates as a personal alarm that signals for help when a firefighter becomes disabled. This motion sensory device flashes its lights and makes loud sounds if a firefighter stops moving for 30 seconds.
Along with Patton, approximately a million firefighters in the United States are susceptible to unpredictable malfunctioning of their safety devices.
Oxford Fire Department Assistant Duty Chief Cary Sallis said the department has used this integrated system for years, and it plays intricate part in helping keep its firefighters safe.
“This is a life and death device,” he said. “If someone is down, you would be able to find them.”
At first, the Oxford Fire Department used a sensory device that firefighters clipped on their uniforms until officials noticed that firefighters had a tendency to forget to turn them on before entering fire inflamed buildings.
It then switched to the current system, which is now demeaned flawed, because it turns on automatically when firefighters put on their oxygen tanks. However, according to Oxford Fire Department Duty Chief Mike Hill, the department is in the process of meeting with the manufacturer, Mining Safety Appliances Company, to discuss possible improvements to the PASS device.
According to the protection association, revisions of the current system came after tests from the National Institute of Standards and Technology showed that defects existed in the product. Research conducted by the institute found that water leakage into electronic and battery compartment could cause the device to either beep continually or stop working altogether.
Sallis said some of the department’s devices have gone off automatically in the past, which could cause firefighters to search for each other under false pretenses. The institute found that the volume of the beeping could start to diminish after being exposed to temperatures as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, which could be the temperature in a room next to a fire. The protection association changed their requirements and testing of the product in the several areas including water immersion and high temperatures.
Local firefighters are dependent on the standard set by the protection association and the available technology, Sallis said.
“There is no other technology out there,” he said.
Sallis said the while Oxford does not have many structure fires, safety is still important.
“All it takes is one and some one gets killed and that’s one too many,” Sallis said.
The association developed its tougher standards shortly after Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Bill Dedman produced a special report for MSNBC that highlighted the flaws in the safety devices.
According to Dedman’s MSNBC special report, 15 firefighters have died since 1998 in fires where the devices did not go off or were so quiet that rescuers were not able to find firefighters it time to save them.
Sallis said safety is a major priority of his department.
“In fire service, safety is everything,” he said. “It’s everybody’s responsibility that everybody gets home.”
Dedman’s report also presented a document that was made public under the Freedom of Information Act, which revealed that in February of 2000 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention blocked an investigation by its own experts to analyze the possible failures of the alarms and other firefighter equipment.
According to the fire protection association Web site “fire fighters and other emergency responders should continue to activate and wear PASS whenever in a hazardous area of any incident, but should also be aware of the possibility that hostile conditions may adversely affect the operation of PASS.”
The Oxford Fire Department received 742 calls to intercept emergency situations in 2006, including 27 building fires, 54 cooking fires and 18 car fires, Hill said.