Unrest grows among government officials Generalitat fire brigade after a new failure of a Assisted Breathing Equipment (ERA) in an intervention last night in the fire of a house of Sant Feliu de Guíxols. It’s the third air kit to fail in two weeks. three breakdowns That had been produced after the Conselleria d’Interior will review the 1,720 teams as a result of the widespread problem that EL PERIÓDICO uncovered at the beginning of the year. The three defective pieces of equipment belong to the Girona region, where a meeting is being held this Friday to address a situation that seriously compromises the integrity of the officials: on two of the three occasions the firefighters have run out of air when they were inside a fire , surrounded by smoke. The Olot firefighter was slightly injured and tonight’s firefighter from the Sant Feliu fire was able to get outside on his own foot.
The firefighter who worked in the Sant Feliu de Guíxols park was forcing the door of a second floor on fire with two people inside. He was breathing with air bottles due to the smoke. At that moment, according to the sources consulted, the team’s air supply was interrupted because the bottles were emptied without prior notice. The manometer indicated wrongly a pressure of 150 bars, which meant that the bottles were still full but were actually empty. The firefighter had to flee, falling down the stairs, so as not to get intoxicated. The two residents of Sant Feliu de Guíxols were rescued shortly after, minor injuries due to smoke inhalation.
The same thing happened in the Olot car park fire two weeks ago. The pressure gauge erroneously indicated to the firefighter that he still had air, but it was not true: the officer, surprised by the end of the oxygen reserve, had to remove his mask surrounded by a smoky atmosphere and breathing heavily. He managed to get outside, where he was treated by an ambulance from the Medical Emergencies System (SEM) and discharged after a few hours.
Three incidents in Girona
To these two failures it is worth adding a third registered in the same region, that of Girona. The three defective air equipment have occurred in the same demarcation and their top managers have met this Friday to discuss a matter that worries the firefighters, who feel that their integrity is at stake because running out of air depending on what accident may result fatal. own General Directorate of Fire Prevention, Extinction and Rescueof Joan Delortplans to issue an internal statement throughout the day to reassure emergency workers.
The third team that has failed in Girona was that of a firefighter from the park of The Pear (Baix Emporda) who was working on a house fire in the old town of Celrà. When the flames had been extinguished, and he was checking the air conditions with a gas detector, the pressure gauge on his equipment also failed. He indicated different pressures and confused the firefighter, who had to leave the task and go outside. Both the Olot team, Celrà and Sant Feliu de Guíxols have been sealed and will be reviewed. The teams involved in the incidents in Olot and Sant Feliu de Guíxols belong to the MSA company.
Since the ERA crisis began, uncovered by EL PERIÓDICO at the beginning of the year, according to Interior, between July 2021 and March 2022 failures were detected in 16 teams, both in training and in guard services, but there were no injuries, until the intoxicated in Olot, who could have suffered a worse outcome given the toxicity of the fires in which vehicles burn: the last death of a Generalitat firefighter, Joan Liébana, occurred on June 17, 2021, in a fire declared in a car garage.
The ERA crisis
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The serious anomaly that was detected half a year ago and that forced the Government to buy 400 new ERAs consisted of the manometer freezing. The main hypothesis to explain why it was freezing was that some compressors – the machines that fill the bottles with air – were introducing moisture and that this, due to the cold caused by the release of compressed oxygen, solidified. The Firefighters are now investigating whether this pressure gauge from the Olot firefighter and the one from tonight in Sant Feliu de Guíxols have also frozen or have failed for other reasons.
One of the main obstacles that the Interior encountered in dealing with this problem, of which some senior managers of the body did not initially inform the unions or the Ministry itself, was that the traceability of the equipment had not been respected Y it was not possible to know in which compressor each unit had been recharged. This is different now, sources from the Bombers emphasize. After the ERA crisis, Interior outsourced the maintenance of the equipment and also the refilling of the bottles to the Airbox company.