Abstract
Detailed characterization of a firefighter’s typical thermal exposures during live-fire training and responses can provide important insights into the risks faced and the necessary protections, protocols, and standards required. In order to gather data on representative thermal conditions from a firefighter’s continually varying local environment in a live-fire training exercise, a portable heat flux and gas temperature measurement system was created, calibrated, and integrated into firefighter personal protective equipment (PPE). Data were collected from 25 live-fire training exposures during seven different types of scenarios. Based on the collected data, mild training environments generally exposed firefighters to temperatures around 50°C and heat fluxes around 1 kW/m2, while severe training conditions generally resulted in temperatures between 150°C and 200°C with heat fluxes between 3 kW/m2 and 6 kW/m2. For every scenario investigated, the heat flux data portrayed a more severe environment than the temperature data when interpreted using established thermal classes developed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology for electronic equipment used by first responders. Local temperatures from the portable measurement system were compared with temperatures measured by stationary thermocouples installed in the training structure for 14 different exposures. It was determined the stationary temperatures represented only a rough approximate bound of the actual temperature of the immediate training environment due to the typically coarse distribution of these sensors throughout the structure and their relative (fixed) distance from the fire sets. The portable thermal measurement system has provided new insights into the integration of electronic sensors with firefighter PPE and the conditions experienced by firefighters in live-fire training scenarios, which has promise to improve the safety and health of the fire service.
Highlights
A firefighter’s thermal exposure on the fire ground or training ground has a significant contribution to the risk faced in their job
The plot does suggest a slight bias towards over predicting the lowest end of the calibration range, though agreement at 3 kW/m2 and 5 kW/m2 is better than 1%. These results suggest the heat flux microsensor (HFM) of the portable measurement and data acquisition system will provide a reliable assessment of the moderate to high heat flux values of interest in the Class
Data collected from the five different typical live-fire training exercises are summarized in Tables 4 and 5
Summary
A firefighter’s thermal exposure on the fire ground or training ground has a significant contribution to the risk faced in their job. Measuring this exposure can provide a means to quantify the risk and guide standards development to improve training, personal protective equipment (PPE), technology, and overall firefighter health and wellness. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), over 7500 firefighters were injured during training related activities in the United States in 2013 [1]. There is concern that gas temperature alone may not be a sufficient measure of the risk to which the firefighters are exposed as these stationary thermocouples may be either partially shielded from some portion of the fuel or installed in areas distant from where the firefighters would be exposed. Fatalities that have occurred during live-fire training have led to discussions about what the future of live-fire training should be [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
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