Aurelie Favre, Senior Marketing Manager presents MSA Safety’s range of protective gear and technology innovations designed to enhance firefighter safety and efficiency

How is MSA Safety helping firefighters navigate daily challenges?

MSA Safety has a range of solutions to help keep firefighters protected and connected at the fire scene, as well as providing firefighters with tools to simplify compliance and easily access data to help make their jobs easier and ensuring they’re prepared and ready to respond.

Firefighters face a multitude of unpredictable scenarios, ranging from technical rescue missions to wildland firefighting, and in the realm of emergency response, adaptability is an important factor.

Having the appropriate protective gear and technology to suit a given situation can make a difference.

We’re helping firefighters operate safer with new solutions and products that leverage technology and data to help products last longer, perform optimally, and bring awareness to their behaviors.

We’re looking forward to the Emergency Services Show and showcasing our industry-leading solutions including personal protective equipment, like MSA Bristol fire protective clothing, MSA GALLET® Fire Helmets, our M1 self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and MSA FireGrid software.

We have the solutions to help firefighters and brigades navigate their challenges through our ecosystem of fire service products.

What are the current trends in fire protective clothing and gear?

The role of protective clothing in helping to protect first responders is an area of particular focus.

Firefighters and decision makers should consider selecting PPE based on their agencies anticipated needs and adapting to evolving hazards, not only adherence to current standards.

Structural gear remains critical for most of the fire rescue services, but there are trends showing firefighters are looking for enhancements to their gear when it comes to fabrics.

MSA Bristol offers diverse types of protective clothing for the varied scenarios to which firefighters respond.

Whether fighting structural fires, navigating urban search and rescue missions, or confronting wildfires, each scenario may demand specialised PPE.

At ESS, MSA Safety will have the full line of Bristol fire protective clothing on display, including our newest design, the MSA Bristol Rescue Stretch.

It integrates one of the industry’s latest innovations, the GORE-TEX CROSSTECH® PYRAD® stretch fabric, which is a lightweight fabric, that is flexible, waterproof, wind proof, and has blood-borne pathogen protection.

It also features incidental flame protection, and comes in varying colors, styles and fits.

MSA will also have the Bristol X4 series of fire protective clothing.

This includes the X4 structural fire protective clothing and X4 Wildland™ garment.

The X4 Wildland garment is designed to be worn for longer periods of time in hot environments.

It offers lightweight comfort to help firefighters in situations where wearing a structural suit could be too inefficient.

Additionally, there will be the X4 TRW-Hybrid™ suit, which is designed for the evolving demands of technical rescue teams and wildland firefighters alike.

With a convertible design, it can transition from technical rescue to wildland firefighting applications, offering versatility without compromising on performance.

With removeable features and durable liquid resistance, it helps provide the level of protection needed for diverse emergency scenarios.

 

How does Bristol incorporate customer feedback and requests for more diverse sizing and customizable clothing into their designs?

When it comes to diversity in the fire service, there’s a lot of work that has already been done with fire protective clothing to accommodate the diverse builds of firefighters, with a range of fits that Bristol has offered and continues to offer.

But right now, there’s a need for making it known that there are many options out there to accommodate the needs of firefighters.

It’s about providing firefighters with different choices so they can select what turnout gear fits them best.

Incorporating design features into Bristol fire protective clothing comes in large part from customer feedback.

That customer feedback is imperative to Bristol and how we design and deliver new protective firefighting equipment.

Voice of Customer (VOC) activities are important for Bristol during the product development process, and paying attention to form, fit, and function is an important part of that process.

Can you share how connected technology is helping to advance safety in the fire service?

This is an area MSA has been out of front of for some time.

With our Connected Firefighter Platform, we’re continually working to provide valuable insights to firefighters and fire brigades without adding complexity or getting in the way.

This means having our hardware, like the SCBA and our LUNAR® personal search and rescue device, for example, work seamlessly with our FireGrid software, that provides on-scene incident management and after-incident data and inventory management capabilities.

Having all that work seamlessly and intuitively in the background allows firefighters to focus on their tasks, while receiving critical data quickly to help make informed decision on the fire ground.

Having this level of connectivity also means there is data that fire services have access to.

And that is where we aim to enable fire brigades to leverage their data to perform ongoing maintenance to service their SCBA and help to keep better track of equipment and PPE usage.

Additionally, the data can provide insights into training possibilities and help departments track compliance-related tasks, helping to simplify those processes.

How can connectivity impact on-scene operations and post-incident behaviours?

With the MSA FireGrid software, one of its core functionalities is live incident management.

This means you can monitor live data from the M1 SCBA to help the incident commander make more informed decisions in real time.

As the incident is ongoing, data is being sent to the cloud, being safely stored, and can be used later to analysis of the event or to manage gear and supplies.

For post-incident analytics, using the SCBA as an example, firefighters don’t have to change anything about the way that they’re using their equipment, but because our devices are cloud-connected, all that data is stored in their account in the cloud, and we’re able to utilise that data to provide more insightful analytics and reporting for the customer to better inform things like training or on-scene procedures.

We are continually looking at ways enhance our capabilities to bring innovative solutions to the fire service to help keep firefighters safe and ready to go.

Those attending ESS will have the ability to demo these solutions during their time in Birmingham.