FL Firefighters Using Grant on Gas Monitors

Dec. 12, 2018
Palm Beach County Fire Rescue is using a federal grant to buy 149 single gas monitors to keep crews safe even when stationed outside a fire.

When on the scene of a building fire, Michael McKeehan's firefighting role stations him outside — where he is likely breathing in cancer-causing toxins with no protection.

McKeehan is a driver operator with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue. To extinguish a fire, it's the captain and firefighter on his engine who typically go inside the building outfitted with the proper respiratory equipment.

But a recent grant award will bring McKeehan and his colleagues some relief. With $98,807 from FEMA and $9,880 of department money, county fire rescue will buy 149 single gas monitors that will notify firefighters, including ones stationed outside blazes, when harmful gases, known as volatile organic compounds, are bombarding them.

"People never put an emphasis on them being outside, they always put an emphasis on people inside, but actually people inside are wearing the highest level of respiratory protection," said McKeehan, who is also the co-chair of the Firefighters Attacking the Cancer Epidemic group. The fire rescue organization has conducted research on firefighters in the county who have had cancer and found a large majority are firetruck driver operators like McKeehan.

The monitors have not yet been ordered, and all the logistics have yet to be figured out but McKeehan said each unit — whether a rescue truck, engine or ladder — will have one. Under prior protocol, only battalion chiefs had the ability to check for volatile organic compounds, or VCOs, but a battalion chief isn't called to every scene, McKeehan said.

"A lot of these VOCs have no odor to them, so you wouldn't know there were VOCs in the air and it could be in high levels," McKeehan said. "Throughout a 30-year career, those really add up so that's why we wanted to get one for every unit."

The gas monitors are the latest safety tool of which county fire rescue is taking advantage to fight cancer. More than 20 county firefighters have died of cancer during the past two decades.

County fire rescue announced in June it is the first fire department in the nation to use half-masks in the "warm zone," which is about 100 feet outside the source of a fire where there are still known carcinogens in the air. Each of the department's nearly 1,400 firefighters will get a mask.

The gas monitors will help notify the firefighters when to use the masks.

Meanwhile, 11 county firefighters are participating in a study examining the risks of cancer they face while on the job. The study is conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and the University of Miami's Sylvester Comprehensive Care Center.

McKeehan said in addition to the gas monitors being an asset to the firefighters, they will also help residents of homes whose houses or businesses caught on fire. Without these monitors, residents could be allowed back into the building without firefighters knowing if these gases were still present.

"We'd use this monitor to let people know if their house is safe to even enter. We didn't have the capability before to monitor those things," McKeehan said. "We would turn the house back over to them and we didn't really have a way to clear the house and let them know it's safe enough for you to go in now without protection on."

___ (c)2018 The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.) Visit The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.) at www.palmbeachpost.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Voice Your Opinion!

To join the conversation, and become an exclusive member of Firehouse, create an account today!