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Firefighters are often the frontline response to critical emergencies and routinely navigate life-threatening scenarios, including the dangers of confined spaces. Regarded as any area designed with restricted or limited entry and exit accessibility, confined spaces often include areas like pits, manholes and tunnels. Their hazards can include limited access and egress, low visibility, structural instabilities like collapses and more.
To navigate these dangerous environments, firefighters turn to confined space safety equipment including harnesses, lanyards and lifting devices that can promote safer and more successful work.
With that in mind, we have outlined best practices regarding confined space safety for firefighters and discuss how the right equipment can protect your team on the job.
Best Practices for Firefighter Safety
Before firefighters can rescue others, they need to take steps to ensure their personal well-being in dangerous situations. To help them do that, your teams should prioritize the following:
- Knowing rescue techniques
- Evaluating the confined space
- Testing equipment prior to use
Knowing Rescue Techniques
By understanding the different methods for rescuing those trapped in confined spaces, teams can proactively develop action plans, roles and responsibilities for emergencies. In addition, teaching and running trainings on different rescue scenarios can help you and your team better promote firefighter safety.
In its trainings, OSHA has identified multiple types of rescue techniques, including "non-entry" (rescue without entry into the confined space) and "entry by others", which applies when companies don't have trained emergency rescue personnel and must rely on the fire department.
Knowing and training on these rescue techniques will help your team maintain their skills, give them practice in verbal/line of sight and radio communication and develop expertise on which pieces of confined space safety equipment they need for each rescue type. For instance, non-entry rescues require lifting devices in addition to a harness and lanyard for the person trapped in the confined space. Meanwhile, an "entry by others" or emergency rescue would require additional personal protective equipment (PPE), such as a respirator.
Evaluating the Confined Space
Another proactive tip for confined space safety for firefighters is to gather information about and evaluate a confined space before going in. By taking a beat to understand specifics about the environment, your team could discover that they're dealing with an atypical confined space like a silo, which would alert them to the possibility of physical hazards including falls or engulfment.
Taking time to study the space and ask questions of a site's incident commander or other team members would also tip them off to necessary confined space safety equipment. In this instance, the firefighter entering would need to wear a harness and lanyard. These firefighters would also require a vertical lifting device that could accommodate at least two people, feature a 360-degree rotating mast to offer rescuers full mobility as they operate.
Understanding the Importance of Timing
Workers hear the phrase "time is of the essence" across professions, but it's especially true when dealing with confined spaces. Reporting from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2020, and additional research by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), suggests that "would-be rescuers" (i.e. on-site, non-emergency workers who go into confined spaces after a trapped person without proper training or equipment) often wind up trapped and in danger alongside the initial person who needed saving.
This not only means that confined space emergencies are especially dangerous, it implies that firefighters may commonly have to rescue more than one person in these scenarios—without extra time to consider their actions after entering the space.
As a result, understanding the importance of fast response times is a critical aspect of confined space safety for firefighters. When your team knows that every second counts, for example, that urgency can encourage them to more closely test and scrutinize their PPE before emergencies strike. Ensuring their lanyard clips are secure on the harness and familiarizing themselves with the fit and feel of the harness padding before they must wear it can eliminate surprises, errors or adjustments in the field. In doing so, your team can promote firefighter safety and shave precious seconds off a rescue.
Preparing Your Team for Confined Space Emergencies
While these are just a few best practices we recommend to promote firefighter safety, one of the best actions you can take for your team is to ensure they have protective equipment for confined spaces that is not only reliable, but also compliant with OSHA or CCOHS regulations.
If you need help identifying the equipment your team needs, contact Tractel® to discuss your options. Our experts will be happy to assist you in finding the regulation-compliant safety equipment you need to protect your firefighters in any space.