The District of Columbia Fire Department is in the process of training the entire department in Rapid Intervention Team skills. One of the many skills covered is to replace a downed firefighter’s damaged or missing SCBA face piece. This somewhat simple skill becomes significantly complicated while wearing gloves in a low-vis environment. Some of the brothers knew there had to be a better way, so they came up with a simple, yet effective, modification to an old face piece. The information for this post was sent in by two individuals: Captain Daniel Troxell from Truck Company 6, and Lieutenant Tony Carroll from Rescue Co. 2.
Click here to get the details of this useful modification.
Beautiful. That looks like a fantastic idea. MAkes it a little easier to package a FF in a possible hostile environment.
Kudos to all those involved. And thanks again to this site for bringing the idea to the masses.
Stay safe.
PS. I hope they patented it.
AWESOME IDEA,
We are going to start working on that today!!!!!
Great idea! I wish more firefighters and their departments would take the same initiative to train on this sorely needed topic.
Nice job fellas…Love It…we have AV2000 for our RIT packs and will have to look at making this same alteration…
That is genius. This site is like a clearing house for good ideas from dedicated fire fighters.
FANTASTIC ………..GREAT MODIFICATION FOR THE RIT PAK.
NICE WORK!! GOOD THINKING!!
Brilliant work brothers.
BRILLIANT.
Patent this ASAP before some ballbag steals your hardwork and retires on it.
i love the idea. couldnt you also put a shorter length of tubes on the pull straps so you can have easy troubleshooting/pulling on them?
What a great idea, way to go DCFD. Heads up and practical which means the NFPA will not like it.
In my opinion the AV 2000 is the only face piece that we should be useing, the AV 3000 is junk………
This is a great idea. When our department trained on this during RIT training, it surprised several members (myself included) how difficult it was to change out a mask in the dark with gloves on ect. Love the effort the brothers in DC put out and their selflessness for sharing it with the rest of us. Keep up the good work. We are currently in the process of switching the department from MSA to SCOTT and will be getting the new RIT packs as well. I will make sure that our SCBA committee (made up of all line guys) sees this. We will be doing alot more hands on training before the new packs go online next month and hopefully this will be included. Thanks for submitting the idea.
Excellent Job DCFD!! It’s nice to see out of the box thinking that will contribute to saving our lives.
We had an entire month this year dedicated to RIT training, and it was a great experience for all of our companies.
My engine tends to a dedicated RIT truck based on our current run cards, so I will definitely share this with the crew.
Great idea. We will try as well. One thing we learned from FDTN was removing the nose cone. It’s function is for anti-fogging. Once removed, the change over is easy. Even with the AV 3000. Thanks again.
Great idea!
If anyone has this type of thing for the MSA I’d loe to see pictures.
Drew Smith, My department operates MSA Firehawk SCBA and when I go into work tonight I’ll be looking doing this to our RIT Pack / RescueAire facepiece. I’ll be sure to let you know how it works out. If you beat me to it please share the info as well. Great idea DCFD.
Good stuff, hopefully we won’t have to use it anytime soon-
One of the best ideas I have seen in years.! Watch Scott copy it!
NFPA wont like It.
N.F.P.A = NO F@#KING PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Scott already has FAST PACKS. The only thing I don’t like about swapping the entire facepiece, is that you’re exposing his face and possibly his head by having to remove the helmet and facepiece. (unless of course this has already happened during the emergency) With the SCOTT FAST PACKS, you can fill the cylinder while it’s still on the downed FF’s back (with the new maks they came out with a coupke of years ago), or you can just swap out the regulators from the used mask to the FAST PACK…
I stand corrected!! LOL I just read the caption ABOVE the picture where it discusses using this for a damaged facepiece or missing facepiece… Excellent! nice job, now get it patented as some others suggested!
EXCELLENT IDEA!! I work at our training center and with a few of the other instructors, do all of the RIT training. We constantly enforce the importance of getting a good, dedicated air supply in place.
This is the same method we teach and the same that we train on in our stations. My RIT mask will be changed tonight since my station is the RIT company.
I agree with the AV2000 vs. 3000. Use the straps off the 3000 to make these modifications.
guys, thats incredible. personally i dont have a clue between the difference of a 2000 or a 3000, but i know what you guys did and its awesome. simple ,simple ,simple.
made the modifications with the rings. Now looking at the modifications to the head net ( not sure if this will void the warranty of Draeggers).
great web, great information
AFD rescue 4
Glad to see that Danny and Tony bumped there heads together for this idea. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK BROTHERS!!
BOSS from 9 Truck!!
Great useful idea!
Would it better to have rings on the top straps also?
Putting a mask onto another with gloves on is something I need to train on.
Dadman,
we added the extra rings to the top straps while we made the change. i figured it couldn’t hurt to have them on all of the straps since the rings are only about 25 cents each.
Hey everyone,
I am new to the fire service, and very proud. As a probie, it can sometimes be difficult to manage speaking and knowing when to keep quiet. Quiet is always the right answer. I went through the proper chain to get this RIT mask modification considered for our RIT packs. I quickly poited to this website. So far the rings are on and we are checking the warranty issues regarding the strap. Thank you for your time. This website will be a regular stop in my continual learning.
Has anyone talked to Scott or any other manufacturers about possible warranty or liability issues involved in modifications to their equipment. That said it looks like a great idea. My refused to make the mods due to the aboveissues (he is a Scott salesman)
Edit of above
My Chief won’t let us do the mods due to above noted issues (he is a Scott salesman)
Well I’m sure your not going out and buying a brand new mask and doing this to it. Most likely when a firefighter gets a new mask because theirs is old and time for replacement then you take the old one which the warranty has most likely ran out then you use that one. As for liability issues your not doing any heavy modifications to the mask. If anything Scott or any other manufacturer would be pissed they did not think of it sooner so they could make a quick dollar off of it. So in conclusion I think its a wonderful idea. Be safe god bless.
He’s not worried about warranty issues he is worried about the liability of modifiying a piece of safety equipment without the maufacturers OK.
As these mods don’t appear to compromise the fit of the mask or the operation of the air supply/delivery, I’m curious as to what liability he’s worried about. What about the liability of losing one of our own because we have a difficult time trying to get the facepiece on them, when a more efficient method had been suggested? Just food for thought. I also liked the post about removing the nose cone. Keep up the good ideas.
Great ideas!! Our department is very proactive in the RIT environment, and when we saw this post we went for it. We changed some of our masks over to this set-up and been training with them for some time. The crews are becoming much more efficient with the mask modification and are increasing the capabilities of our team. We just recently put the change into effect and placed the mask modification into service on our RIT packs. Good work and keep the ideas flowing. Be safe out there.
Great idea! When our new packs come, I’ll be setting aside some of our facepieces that went with the others to do this modification. Great work by the DCFD brothers!
This is a good idea, a great idea as a matter of fact. But do the modifications affect the warranty on the masks? Also, say something goes wrong, like one of the rings gets snagged or the face piece fails? When the incident is investigated, wont the company be repremanded? I would hate for such a good idea with a good intention to be shot down by the NFPA. Just a thought…
For all of you who are posting concerns about warranty and liability issues, please understand: This face piece set-up is designed for use on an unconscious downed firefighter who is in serious danger of not making it out alive. Warranties, reprimands, liabilities, rebates, money-back gaurantees, etc., are out the window. The bottom line is to get the member on air as quickly as possible and get him or her out!