They carry structural firefighting protective clothing because the FAA considers the fuselage of an airplane to be a structure."
Larry Williams is a training consultant for aircraft firefighting and he points out in the Jackson report (p. 8) that the technology of crash fire rescue firefighting has advanced "…well beyond the days of chemical foam and asbestos suits to the point where a 6,000-gallon capacity crash vehicles can be operated by one person." Just about all actual firefighting by airport firefighters is done from inside that vehicle, Williams explains. The FAA has a similar view. The advanced capability of Aqueous Film Forming Foams (AFFF) "…now enable airport firefighters to control and essentially extinguish large aviation fuel fires while still in the attacking vehicle" (Jackson, p. 9).
Meanwhile, when it comes to a situation where an aircraft has crashed at an airport and there is an emergency rescue and firefighting task ahead, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) claims that lives are being jeopardized due to "outdated" Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety standards (Air Safety Week, 2008). In fact the IAFF President Harold Schaitberger asserts that the FAA has "resisted modernizing its safety standards since 1988" even though subsequent to that date the number of airplanes, the size of airplanes and the amount of fuel they carry have "grown dramatically" (Air Safety Week).
Firefighters who earn their pay working at airports claim that the FAA's standards are "archaic" and that those standards should "…at least be brought up-to-date" with voluntary consensus standards that are used nationally for "response time," staffing and deployment. In the article a fire captain at Logan Airport...
Given the inadequate safety standards in airports, the public is "being placed in danger" Conner continued.
One of the main complaints firefighters put forward is that the FAA does not required airport fire departments to "rescue passengers or extinguish fires" inside a burning airplane, according to the IAFF. The task of rescuing passengers on the ground when a plane is on fire has been left to airline flight crews, according to the IAFF's interpretation of FAA guidelines. The only responsibility that airport firefighters have is to "provide a safe path for exit from the aircraft," the Air Safety Week article continues. Moreover, the FAA rules call for firefighters to be on the scene of a burning airplane within three minutes; that is not always possible, of course.
Conclusion
Even though there are few resources that provide data on injuries to airport firefighters, it is known that when a major airplane-related accident occurs, firefighters must be trained, ready, and fully equipped to safe lives and extinguish fire as quickly as possible.
Works Cited
Air Safety Week. (2008). Fire Fighters: Dangerous Airport Fire / Rescue Standards Jeopardize
Safety. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from the International Association of Fire Fighters.
http://www.iaff.org/Comm/PDFs/Airport.pdf.
Jackson, Larry L. (1999). An Evaluation of the Need for Proximity Protective Clothing for Aircraft Firefighting. Strategic Management of Change. National Fire Academy / Executive
Fire Officer Program. Retrieved July 14, 2010, from www.usfa.dhs.gov/pdf/efop/efo30812.pdf.
