Dear readers:

Foundry Cycles is a bicycle manufacturing company based out of Bloomington, MN. From the company directly, regarding their recent contest:

"Foundry Cycles is looking for five brand ambassadors, Foundry Tradesmen and women, to ride our bikes and document their experiences. If you're chosen, you'll be given a Foundry bike. In return, you'll spend the year talking to people about your Foundry. Go on rides, take it to races, local events, coffee shops, the grocery store, your local bike shop—everywhere you'd normally take your bike. Answer questions about it. Tell people what you think of it. Let them take it for a spin. Throw on a helmet cam and send us video of your adventures. Write up your experiences. You'll have to earn your keep, but if you work as hard as you play, then you're right for Foundry."

This is my entry—submitted this 30th day of March, 2012. Wish me luck.

 - RL

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Dammit.

I cursed as the tire lever slipped, and I bashed my knuckles against the cassette. Glancing down, I could just barely see the blood beginning to collect by the desolate yellow glow in which I was forced to work.

Looking up and stretching a sore back, I made a personal decree that I would get my next flat tire in front of a brighter sign. The proud, canary-yellow rectangle that proclaimed Morgan’s Fish Fry to be “Black Owned, Family Operated” left something to be desired in the way of illumination.

What the hell am I doing, I thought dejectedly. (I have this thought about once a month, for various reasons.) It’s almost six in the morning, and I’m at a deserted intersection in Southeast D.C. Okay, so there’s that other guy over there, but I’ve picked him up in the ambulance before—I’m pretty sure he’s zonked out on heroin.

I was riding the streets of the city to familiarize myself with alleyways, side streets, major buildings, and unusual addresses; but my morning workout/educational experience was going to be cut short today. As I chuckled to myself about comedian Chris Rock’s routine about what happens on MLK Jr. Avenue in every city, I silently thanked my now-torn inner tube for making it this far. I wasn’t more than a few blocks from the firehouse, and my shift was starting soon. In the pre-dawn darkness, the only sound in Anacostia was the crisp clicking of my cleats as I navigated the neglected sidewalk.

In June of 2008, I moved to Washington after an eager and hurried post-college application to the District of Columbia Fire Department. After a short period of tortuous waiting to “get on the job,” as they say, I entered the fire academy that very December. Today, my length of service with the District government stands at just over three years.

My short career has brought me all over the sixty-nine square miles that encompass our nation’s capitol, working in all four quadrants and damn near every one of the thirty-three firehouses dotting our diamond-shaped city. My original appointment was to a location in Northeast Washington, where I learned about the crowded violence of a Go-Go club and the peaceful slumber of a heroin overdose. The move to the big leagues, however, was my eventual transfer to a firehouse in the Southeast quadrant. In the notoriously violent and fiscally-depressed area east of the Anacostia River, I was taught the finer points of PCP-induced manic ranting (both with and without physical altercations), as well as the strange things one will shout when there’s a knife sticking out of your spine or a bullet in your left ass-cheek. Gunshots, vicious assaults, heart attacks, suicides, “intentional vehicular contact,” you name it—Southeast had it.

And I loved it.

Every shift brings twenty-four straight hours of uncertainty and excitement.  As a firehouse staffed with fourteen bodies, Engine Company 15 and Rescue Squad 3 spend 25% of our waking lives together. While on duty, we train, we cook, we bullshit, we laugh, and we work our asses off. We’re one of the busiest firehouses in the Department, and we’re tasked with knowing this city—our city—like the backs of our well-worn hands.

I’ve been writing about my experiences since I entered the Training Academy years ago. The links provided throughout this essay are to my personal firefighting blog, RaisingLadders. I was selected several ago to be a contributor to FireEMSBlogs.com (a successful industry blog aggregate geared towards the emergency responders of the world), and I have been faithfully writing and recording my experiences ever since. Additionally, I was recently selected as a customer testimonial for RoadID, tying together my experiences as an emergency responder, husband, runner, and cyclist.

As a firefighter and paramedic, I continually serve the citizens in any multitude of emergency situations. The one thing that I will always need to do my job successfully is to have access to the proper tools. We use tools for extinguishment and tools for demolition. We use tools for giving medications and tools for shocking someone’s heart back to life. I agree very strongly with Foundry’s mission that bicycles should be tools, and I’m constantly using and testing everything that is made available to me. Another thing you’ll learn about most firemen: our job isn’t what you’d call lucrative, and so most of us have a part-time job. I pad my income (and feed my addiction) as an employee at the best-reviewed bike shop in our fine city, BicycleSPACE.

For four amazing years, I have lived and worked in one of the greatest cities in the world.  I know this place, in more ways than most citizens or commuters can imagine. I've worked in the firehouses and the bike shops; I’ve been to the large-scale training drills and the group rides; I’ve explored the back alleys and the bike paths. I assure you that this bike will never hang on a wall, unloved and unridden. I appreciate the function, utility, durability, and form of every tool I use in my journey, and I like to push the limits of each and every one. In a city like this, everyone is always looking for the next best thing. Foundry is it—and I want to be the one to tell them all about you.

Earlier this month, the National Awareness Director of the Mesothelioma Center (out of Orlando, FL) and the team at Asbestos.com contacted me, asking if I would be interested in a guest post regarding the dangers of working in an asbestos-rich environment, as we are sometimes called upon to do in cities with older construction. The asbestos within may not have been abated properly, and so can still pose a significant risk to firefighters not only making entry for firefighting operations, but for any other purpose that may disturb asbestos still in place. Many thanks to Danielle DiPietro for putting this together, and to Tim Povtak for his writing. It's great to see people reaching out to emergency responders to educate everyone about these dangers!

     —RL

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Risk of Asbestos Exposure among Firefighters

Asbestos exposure may not be the first thing on the mind of a firefighter when he arrives on a scene to find a structure going up in flames. But it's something to think about seriously.

Even though asbestos once was widely coveted as a building material for its heat resistance and fire-retardant qualities, it still breaks down under extremely high temperatures, sending its toxic, microscopic fibers into the air, putting everyone nearby at risk.

Although the use of asbestos has been dramatically reduced in recent decades, any buildings or residences built before 1980 are likely to have components of them that contain asbestos it. And the majority of the fires today in homes and businesses are in the older structures.

There is plenty of well-known danger in this admirable profession, but long-term health risks often are not considered when taking this job. An exposure to asbestos can lead to a number of respiratory illnesses, including lung cancer and rare mesothelioma cancer, which can have a latency period of up to 50 years.

Firefighters can be exposed to asbestos in roofing materials, pipe and duct insulation, floor and ceiling tiles, furnace gaskets and vinyl siding. Where there is smoke in the air, there could be asbestos dust and fibers.

These fibers are the danger. When inhaled, they can be difficult for a human body to get rid of. Instead, the fibers can lodge in the lining of the lungs and sit—for years—and eventually cause scarring or tumors.

This is where the use of proper respiratory equipment becomes vital to a fireman.  Equipment used by firefighters through the 1970s, including fire-resistant coats and helmets, often contained asbestos that was woven into the materials.

It isn't just the fires, either, that present the problem. Older firehouses, where firemen often are based, often contain asbestos, unless an official abatement has been done. In Lackawanna, N.Y., for example, firemen had to be evacuated from Fire House 3 when air samples there revealed dangerous amounts of asbestos in the dust they where they reported each day.

The city of Everett, Wash., settled a million dollar lawsuit with firefighters that stemmed from asbestos exposure during training sessions. As part of the training session, firefighters were working in soon-to-be-demolished buildings.

Because no fire was involved in one particular drill, no respiratory equipment was used, but it later was discovered there was plenty of asbestos in the dust within the building.

Much has been made of the firefighters and other first responders who arrived at the World Trade Center soon after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. In the 10-plus years afterward, firefighters now are discovering long-term, respiratory issues that have stemmed from the toxic dust that covered Manhattan for many days.

Bio: Tim Povtak is a senior writer for the Mesothelioma Center. He is a former award-winning journalist at a metropolitan American newspaper.

Last tour, I was fortunate enough to find myself in the middle of a drill with the guys from Rescue 1. Having found "The Bowring Fire Tool" on the internet, they had two of them on loan to play with, and were putting it through its paces. Heralded as "pound-for-pound, the most versatile fire tool ever," we set up a few scenarios and took some pictures and video footage for any interested parties.

According to the website, the functionality of the tool is as follows:

1. 1 1/2" pin lug spanner
2. 2 1/2" pin lug spanner / carabiner attachment
3. oxygen bottle valve wrench
4. "figure-8" section, usable in various rope scenarios
5. hose cradle, usable for 1" to 1 3/4" hose
6. spanner wrench tip
7. gas shut-off wrench
8. carabiner attachment point
9. Storz coupling notch
10. 2", 2 1/2", or 3" hose cradle
11. "RIT FF drag, glass ripper, and mattress hook" (their words, not mine)
12. water shut-off / optional gas shut-off

Our first scenario was the Nance Drill. A firefighter was placed below-grade with an approximately 4'x4' opening above him; a loop of charged hoseline was then inserted into the opening, allowing the "downed" firefighter to stand on the hose and be lifted up by two or more firefighters above him. Pictures do a better job of explaining it than I do, to be honest.

Normally, this difficult aspect of this drill lies in gripping the hoseline effectively while you're trying to lift the firefighter below. The Bowring Tool (utilizing feature #5 above) claims to allow firefighters to easily gain purchase on the hose and bring the downed firefighter up and out of the hole more quickly. We found that it works… sort of. The videos on the website show firefighters demonstrating the tool with a relatively dry hoseline, and it appears to work well. However, we chose to make the situation as close to actual conditions as we could, and soaked the hoseline with water before we attempted the drill; as you'll see in the following videos, the Bowring functioned more as a squeegee than a hose-gripper-thingee, as they claim.

The summary of our findings during the Nance Drill were:

• the hoseline needs to be pretty rigid for the tool to grip effectively. the 1 1/2" hoseline charged to 130 p.s.i. that we started with did not allow the tool's camming action to grip the hose properly—it more bent it than gripped it. Raising the engine pressure to 160 p.s.i. solved the problem.
• the more you can crank back on the tool while pulling, the better; most of the "squeegee" action you see in the videos was due to not bending the Bowring far back enough. It's something that can be learned after you do it a few times, but I wouldn't expect someone who's never used it before to know why this is important.
• a wet hoseline is definitely going to be more slippery than a dry one; unfortunately, your hoselines in these kind of situations will almost always be soaked, and there's no avoiding that. Maybe some knurling or other grippy stuff on the Bowring might help?

Long story short, the tool has its advantages. It's pretty neat that it incorporates multiple different functionalities into something that fits into your coat pocket; however, I'm always wary of the typical downfall of the "all-in-one" tool—it does lots of stuff pretty well, but nothing exceptionally well. The spanner wrenches/valve shut-offs are pretty standard, I wouldn't expect any difficulties there (and the tool appears to be sturdy and well-made). With a bit of practice, one can figure out the correct sequence of pulling/re-setting/pulling that works, but I certainly wouldn't trust someone unfamiliar or unpracticed with the device to use it effectively. Although, practice makes perfect with every tool. I'd be curious to see if it actually rips through drywall and siding as effectively as the testimonials on their website claim; another drill for another day, I suppose.

We did play around to find different uses for it; our most interesting discovery that we could use an uncharged hoseline (say, if we had a hose rack on our shoulder and were still making our way up in a high-rise) hitched through the tool as an effective hauling system for our man in the hole. Quick to set up, and our 1 1/2" hose fit through the largest hole in the Bowline fairly easily without any concern that it would slip or move while in operation. It gave us a large, serviceable hook that we could attach to multiple points on a firefighter in full SCBA.

Some of the Squad guys weren't thrilled about it, but I was fairly impressed. Call me young, or naive, or whatever—but I somewhat liked it. For $125, do you think it's worth it?