Maybe I'm making this more complicated than I should. Or maybe I'm really onto something that we as a fire service must look at. I don't know. But I'm concerned about the direction of a very basic fireground skill I taught my first recruit class about 20 years ago-40 hours of SCBA and search techniques. We had low-pressure, positive pressure MSA systems back then. Each class was taught several methods of buddy breathing. In fact, to pass my section of the course, each student had to buddy breathe with me inside the burn building. I taught several methods of buddy breathing. They could place their corrugated breathing tube into my facepiece; we could alternate sticking our breathing tubes into the regulator quick-connect, or we could pass the facepiece of the "good" SCBA back and forth. At the very end of the live burn, I would have them put their breathing tube down their coat and crawl out with me. But, as I said, that was almost 20 years ago.
About five years ago, we purchased new SCBAs and began to drill with them. The SCBA came with a buddy breathing connection. As crews were "in-serviced" on the new SCBA, a problem developed. Members began to experience trouble making the connections in "blacked-out" conditions. Who would connect? Who would let the other party make the connection? People were taking off gloves and experiencing trouble before the connection was complete. After the connection was made, some members experienced difficulty crawling while tethered to another firefighter. All in all, this wasn't a smooth transition.
The Training Bureau at that time contacted some people in other departments, and we learned a startling thing: Other departments were experiencing the same problems.
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