Today’s meetings have discussed three specific areas wildland firefighting, compatibility of PPE and selection, use, care, and maintenance (SUCaM).
The discussions within the wildland meeting focused on the need to revise the current wildland clothing standard EN ISO 15384, this document falls under the Vienna Agreement arrangements whereby CEN and ISO work in collaboration to prepare standards so that there is no duplication in work and a singular performance standard globally. Unfortunately, this is only one of a few PPE standards that have been produced under this process and there are many items of firefighters PPE that have both an EN and an ISO standard often with varying performance requirements.
The next meeting concerned ISO 11999-2 a compatibility standard for firefighters structural PPE. This work is being led by the Japanese who gave an in-depth presentation as to the methodology they will use within this new standard. A project group, in which the UK are represented, will now prepare a committee draft for circulation and comment.
The last meeting discussed the comments received to another new standard concerning the selection, use, care, and maintenance of firefighters PPE often called a ‘SUCaM’ standard. At our previous meeting in Japan it was agreed that this standard will be split into two separate standards as the content was too large after the original project group had revised the ‘cleaning and maintenance’ sections in light of the concerns around contamination. ISO 21808 focuses on ‘selection and use’ and the original ISO 23616 focuses on the cleaning and maintenance (including inspection and repair).
Tomorrow’s meeting will focus entirely on the revision of ISO 11999-3 Firefighting PPE for use in structural fires. There are numerous comments to work through and debate upon the appropriate levels of protection.
More to follow tomorrow.