The crisis of Autonomous Breathing Apparatus (ERA) of the Firefighters of the Generalitat uncovered by EL PERIÓDICO has forced the commands of the Catalan emergency corps to raise the self-protection measures of the about 5,000 people that form the professional and voluntary fabric that integrates its civil protection service in Catalonia.
The fear that the anomalous operation that these air equipment has been showing for months may end up causing an accident has increased even more after the last expert opinion of the main manufacturer with which they operate, Dräger, which in its report has indicated that the air supply could be interrupted. In other words: they are exposed to running out of oxygen while working on a fire. Nine months after the first recorded incident, no one has been able to figure out why the equipment fails or prevent it from failing. The consequence of the nonsense is that the response capacity of the Fire Department has had to be substantially cut back until further notice.
According to the instruction that the Fire Brigade has transferred to the parks, risk actions in burning buildings or in toxic atmospheres should only be carried out urgently if it is known for certain that it is an accident with trapped people inside. For the rest of the situations, the orders are to wait until there are enough troops in front of the incident before making any incursion to take extreme precautions.
Life or death
According to these instructions, to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access, “high-risk operational maneuvers should not be addressed & rdquor; if there are no victims involved in the incident. Any intervention involving the use of breathing equipment – if an indoor fire or toxic environment must be accessed – must postpone until enough troops are available in front of the place to set up a access control at the entrance and predispose to two additional firefighters in charge of entering and auxiliary to colleagues if necessary.
The exact words of the document are not included if “the CACE level 1 and SOS team” could not be implemented. The CACE at level 1 means that a control panel must be set up in front of the incident entrance and a person responsible must be designated to measure the time that each firefighter spends inside the service. This precaution, however, should not be followed if it is known that there is a person trapped inside. Then yes, “immediate rescue and rescue maneuvers of people & rdquor ; can be carried out, emphasizes the instruction. The last point of the section “limitation of operational maneuvers” underlines that the combinations must be “indivisible”. This is that the firefighters will enter in pairs and this union will be maintained until the incident is abandoned.
The Dräger Report
The document begins by recalling that “for months & rdquor; An anomalous operation has been detected in the Autonomous Breathing Equipment (ERA). He goes on to clarify that the most plausible explanation for this generalized problem is that “moist air has been introduced into some air cylinders” and that this humidity, in contact with the cold that causes the release of compressed air, is freezing the pressure gauge –both digital as analog. Until the last expert report that Dräger carried out on two teams in which the pressure gauge had been blocked – the instrument that measures the firefighter’s consumption during an intervention – it was believed that the air supply was not affected by the fault.
It was a serious problem because if the firefighter relied on a frozen pressure gauge, he could mistakenly prolong an intervention and end up being fatally surprised by the end of the oxygen. But Dräger’s recent warning, issued last week, is more alarmist as he also warns that poor quality air blown into cylinders can not only block the manometer, it can also interrupt the oxygen supply. The conclusions of this manufacturer also added that the air analyzed in the bottles of both teams did not meet the stipulated quality and that it could also be harmful to the health of the firefighter. In other words, the equipment used by firefighters today contains harmful air, turns the pressure gauge into a trap and can also stop supplying oxygen.
“What if we don’t know if anyone is trapped?
Unions UGT, CCOO, CATAC and CSIF have requested the ‘conseller’ of the Interior, Joan Ignacio Elena, to paralyze all ERAs until a matter that they consider poses a serious risk to the integrity of firefighters can be resolved. But to date, the department has responded – also through the aforementioned instruction sent to the heads of the parks – that it is working to resolve the situation but stressing that it is not possible to remove all the ERA equipment because that would mean stopping the service assistance.
Related news
The new self-protection instructions have increased the feeling of bewilderment that has taken over the emergency corps. The UGT spokesman, Antonio del Rio, wonders how they should act when they don’t know if people are trapped inside a burning house or not. This situation is something frequent, remember. “Not only in homes, currently an abandoned factory or warehouse can also be occupied. Until we enter, we don’t know if there was someone or not“. One of the firefighters, a fan of comics, has expressed the general feeling of the body in his drawings. “What is meant by immediate actions”, asks one of the vignettes.
The death of Joan Liebana
On June 17, 2021, a firefighter from the Vilanova i la Geltrú park died in a fire that broke out in a workshop in the same municipality. In that service, the victim, Joan Liebana, used a self-contained breathing apparatus that Dräger – the manufacturer – considers obsolete and which also did not have the so-called ‘dead man’s device’, an alarm that warns if the worker suffers an accident and stops moving. To put out that fire, five firefighters entered –Joan was one of them– but only four came out. Nobody noticed that Joan was still inside. An hour passed until, carrying out ventilation tasks with the fire already out, other firefighters came across Joan’s body, already lifeless. For this accident, there are two firefighters charged in a court in Vilanova i al Geltrú, which must clarify whether or not there was criminal responsibility on the part of both. Regardless of the legal outcome of the investigation into Joan’s death, in that incident, air equipment was in poor condition and no access control precautions were taken, nor were colleagues prepared to help if necessary. AND there was no one to rescue in that workshop. They were flames that did not surround any trapped person.