As most young firefighters do, I developed a few bad habits
early on in my fire service career.
Fortunately, many of these bad habits were corrected soon enough that it
wasn’t hard to change them.
However, one particular bad habit was tough for me to change and took
about 10 years before I could finally get it right: wearing the waist straps on
my SCBA.
When I joined the fire service we utilized the wire frame
Scott harnesses with 1 hour steel cylinders and a manual PASS device. To this
day, I still prefer the wire frame harnesses as they had a slim profile, were
lightweight, and didn’t have a million and one bells and whistles to get
snagged on things. Shortly thereafter we upgraded to the Scott Air Pack Fifty
and we were living the high life: padded shoulder straps, padding against the
back plate, and an integrated PASS device. These were all good things. However with both models, wearing the waist strap seemed to
be an optional piece of equipment. At least that’s how it appeared to the
young, impressionable, and naïve firefighter that I was. The guys I looked up to chose not to
wear the waist straps more than they did.
Of course, I wanted to fit in with the guys I was idolizing, so I too
chose not to wear my waist straps.
It’s sad to say that trying to look “cool” led to a bad habit that took
almost a decade to correct.
Over the years, I encountered only a few folks that really got
on my case about not wearing my waist straps. I thought they were just being a pain in the butt and giving
me grief because they had nothing better to do, and in some instances that may
have actually been the case. As I
looked around at other firefighters, companies, and departments, it seemed that
SCBA waist straps appeared to be optional in their eyes too. In fact, I rode with a very busy fire
company that had removed the waist straps from their wire frame harnesses. Not
once did I question this practice or think it was a big deal. I had never encountered any significant
issues while not wearing my SCBA waist straps and only occasionally would they
get snagged on something, which was usually resolved by taking a step or two
backwards.
However, I had one particular career chief officer in
Stafford County that consistently called me out for not wearing my SCBA waist
straps. I got along very well with
this chief and it never failed that he would end up seeing me walking around
without my waist straps on. Since
I was a live-in at my VFD, there were a ton of instances where he would see me
without my waist straps and, in turn, a ton of instances where I was receiving
lectures about the waist straps.
Finally, I had enough of hearing the lectures and realized I had no good
reason for not wearing the SCBA waist straps. My New Year’s Resolution for 2010
was to start wearing my SCBA waist straps. For the first few months I had to make a conscience effort
to ensure I was wearing my SCBA waist straps. However, it soon became habit. That is, a good habit.
When I started this blog, it gave me the option to put a
photograph on the profile. I chose
a picture that reflected the spirit of the blog, a firefighting picture. A few hours after the blog was launched
a good friend of mine sent me a text message saying good things about what I
had posted. However, he also sent
me a text message giving me a hard time about putting a picture up that shows me
not wearing my SCBA waist straps.
My first thoughts were “there’s always one in the crowd” and then I
thought a little more about it and realized that this topic was worthy of a
post on the blog. You see, I too
had become a bad example for the young, impressionable, and naïve firefighters
that had been watching what I do.
I had carried on the legacy of a bad habit and who knows how many people
are now carrying around this bad habit because of my actions. With that said, the responsible thing
to do is to correct this bad habit and also explain why it’s a bad habit.
The SCBA harness is manufactured with waist straps for a
reason, to wear them, not to let them dangle freely. The weight of the SCBA should be carried on the hips and not
the shoulders. You cannot properly
wear the SCBA unless you utilize the waist straps. Additionally, as I identified earlier, unworn SCBA waist
straps can become an entanglement hazard.
They can become entangled on objects while you’re performing fireground
tasks or while crews are working to remove you in a “Mayday” situation. Packaging a downed firefighter for
removal involves securing the SCBA waist strap by running it between the member’s
legs. This allows the SCBA harness
to stay on the downed firefighter while being dragged, carried up or down
stairs, or while being removed from an egress point. During a recent drill I partook in, the “downed firefighter”
was not utilizing their SCBA waist straps and, because the waist straps had
ended up between the downed firefighters back and the SCBA back plate, it
proved to be time consuming to properly package the firefighter for
removal. Since the egress point
was in close proximity, the crew decided to begin the removal instead of
spending more time to find the SCBA waist straps and properly package the
firefighter. During the removal,
one of the waist straps became entangled on an object approximately five feet
from the egress point. Fortunately this was just a drill and the entanglement
was freed quickly. If a member finds
themselves cut off on an upper floor and is forced to use a personal escape
system, it would be unfortunate if an unworn waist strap became snagged on an
object which could delay or prevent the member from exiting. These are all examples of why we should
be utilizing our SCBA waist straps.
I’m not here to be the safety police or PPE police, but I
challenge you to give me a good reason why members should not utilize their
SCBA waist straps. I’m more than
willing to listen if somebody can provide a good reason. If you’re not currently using your SCBA
waist straps, ask yourself “why don’t I?”
Also, remember that some of you are folks that young and impressionable
firefighters look up to. You owe
it to them and to yourself to make sure we’re doing things the right way.
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