WC New Mexico News

From January 19, 2023 post.

Today is Gallup Fire Department Throwback Thursday and we wanted to show you one of our first self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) we used back in the 1960’s.

To give you a little history on fire department self-contained breathing apparatus we have to start in the early fire service. During these times the only respiratory protection Firefighters had were long beards and/or mustaches that they would soak with water and then clinch between their teeth to be used as a filtering device. 

Many different devices and some wild ideas were designed to allow Firefighters to get further into buildings for fire extinguishment but none were widely accepted. 

The first real fire department SCBA came out in 1945. The Scott Aviation Company had been manufacturing breathing apparatus for air crews to operate at extreme altitudes during WWII, when their engineers watched a local fire department trying to put out a very smoky structure fire and they were amazed the Firefighters operated in the smoke with no respiratory protection. 

At first a lot of Firefighters did not like the idea of wearing SCBA’s into fires because early Firefighters were known as “Smoke Eaters” and they thought this device would ruin their reputations. This has changed and now Firefighters wear modern day SCBA’s in almost every type of fire environment. The modern SCBA’s are designed with a lot of technology while protecting the Firefighters from the toxic smoke and gases produced in fires.

Original source can be found here.