Details

Written by Bryan Haywood

Parent Category: Safety Info Posts

Category: Emergency Response

Published: 21 May 2014

I recently came across an interesting situation that may be more common than I would have originally thought. I found this situation merely by being in the right spot at the right time. We were visiting the local Fire Department (FD) in order to participate in a critique of a response to a clients facility. After the critique was over I was talking "shop" with some of the FF’s and just happened to be standing out in their bays and noticed some irregularities regarding their breathing air compressor(s). The Captain noticed that I was intently looking at the set up and mentioned to the safety manager of the facility that if we could wait for a few more minutes that his bottles would be filled and we could take them with us. Then it dawned on me… the facility is NOT getting their Grade D breathing air from a commercial supplier nor are they using their own compressor - instead they are getting their local FD (who does not fall under OSHA) and who were obviously not meeting 1910.134(i). So if you are using your local FD to fill your breathing air cylinders, you may want to verify they are complying with 1910.134, specifically:

Membership Content