VIDEO: Crews took about three hours to put out an apartment fire in Manchester Friday night, with two people sent to the hospital after jumping out of a third-floor window. Firefighters are using that incident to highlight how the need for better gear โ and maintaining it โ has changed over time.
Manchester firefighters were called to 28 Sullivan Street for a fire at an apartment building around 7:40 p.m., where they found heavy fire on all three floors. Crews were pulled out at one point because of dangerous conditions and parts of the building collapsing. “You couldn’t really breathe,” said Shane Goderre, who lives in the neighborhood and says he saw the fire firsthand. “As you got closer, it got thicker and worse.” Two people jumped from the third floor of the building and went to the hospital with serious injuries. There’s no word on their conditions as of Saturday night. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Jason Coulter, a member of the Manchester Fire Department, was one of the firefighters on scene Friday night. He returned to work Saturday morning and began the task of cleaning off the turnout gear used to fight the fire the previous night. Coulter says it takes about half an hour for an initial wash once all pieces of the gear are separated. Then, it goes into a washing machine that can accept up to two sets for about an hour wash cycle. Finally, the gear is brought to a special dryer, a large wardrobe-like apparatus, where temperatures get up to 105 degrees for several hours.
The city of Manchester supplies each of the more than 200 firefighters at the department with two sets of gear, so one can wash while the other is taken out onto a call if needed. Each set, which can cost up to $5,000, has changed a lot over the past 40 years, says Coulter. “Back in the 70s and 80s, you would have your boots that would come up to your knees, and then you would have just a pair of jeans on, and a long trench coat,” he said. The need for improved gear, he says, is due to the changing environments firefighters face in the years since. Historically, most of the items that would burn in a fire were made of natural wood products.
Nowadays, Coulter notes, everything from furniture to electronics is made with synthetic materials like plastic and coated in chemicals. “All that stuff produces smoke that’s a lot more dangerous to us now than it was then,” Coulter said. Turnout gear has a lifespan of about 10 years, designed with additional layers meant to protect first responders from the increasing toxicity emitted from the fires they fight.
Even when it’s well-taken care of, though, most gear contains PFAS chemicals that studies show can put firefighters at a higher risk of cancer with the now-necessary additional protective layers. Some departments, like Concord, have taken action to fund PFAS-free gear. For Coulter and his colleagues, the risk of what they encounter on a scene is a tradeoff with the gear they both use and maintain. “It only takes a couple of breaths of that chemical (in the smoke), and you could easily take your lungs out, and you could be out of a job for the rest of your life,” Coulter said.
