Well the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) can vary. We generally use two uniforms, one for wildfires (Grass/Scrub/Bushland etc) and another one for structure fires. The wildfire one is made of a single layer of a yellow meterial called Nomex, and is generally lightweight. On the other hand, our structural PPE is brand spanking new and is made from a material called Polybenzimidazole (or PBI for short) this is the light brown PPE that you will see more and more around the fire ground. The PBI structural PPE is made up of multiple layers and is much heavier than the wildfire PPE. Both types of PPE can be worn to other incidents, but you wont wear wildfire gear to an internal structural attack, nor will you wear the structural gear to a wild fire unless you like heat stroke.
Then we have two types of helmet, wildfire and structural (notice a trend?) Of these types of helmet we have many different brands used, ranging from both old and heavy models to the latest in lightweight Kevlar construction. Ill weight all this PPE for you if you want in the next few days to be exact.
For structural attack, we wear Breathing Apparatus (BA), the CFS BA sets weigh in at about 16kg, whereas the MFS BA sets use a lighter cylinder and hence weigh less. Ive no idea how much exactly, but its about half of the CFS ones.
In terms of hose weight, we use three different diameter hose, 25mm, 38mm and 64mm. These start off as rather light (25mm) to horridly heavy (64mm). I cant remember the exact weights, but I *THINK* that 30m of 64mm hose weighs about 100kg when charged with water.
Its late, so more later
