The way this country is going in terms of OHS&W and liability, I can imagine it won't be long before the IC can be held accountable for any health problems fire fighters have after attending an incident, and as technically the only fires you can fight without BA are rural ones, that means BA for everything else. Would that then mean you can't get on the truck to a bin fire if you haven't been taught to fight structural fires? Or brigades in the sticks can't put out a car fire unless they're trained in how to drag a dummy out of a smoke logged warehouse?
I don't necessarily support the idea, but I can see good reasons to do it.
...to be brutally honest, if your not capable of going internal at a job [should the circumstances permit] then perhaps you shouldn't be a BA operator at all...
If you're not fit enough to wear BA, you shouldn't be dragging hose up and down slopes at a grass fire either. ..or lifting heavy hydraulic tools at an RCR...
I see no reason or this course to exist, especially when you consider almost all cars, rubbish fires, etc can be a surroud and drown from a distance anyway.
If you can breath the smoke, you technically need BA. Do you really think it's possible to properly put out a car fire without breathing any smoke? ...and under that logic, you shouldn't need BA at a house fire that doesn't have internal attack either...
Way too many issues with doing this, at a nice little car fire spreads to house oh sorry i can't do internal, let us burn the house down then.
As opposed to car car fire that spreads into a house when no one is wearing BA? There'd be no difference in outcome, except perhaps less chance of the fire fighters getting lung cancer.
