by Gene Zimmerman

Forget McCain, Obama or Hillary! I say Stan Sanders for President!

If the debate always comes down to “What is he/she going to do for me?”, then Stan Sanders of Sanders Industrial Designs should be the unanimous choice for President. If Mr. Sanders has his way, he will do more for you and me than any single president in our lifetime.

Here is the exciting story. I received a telephone call from our Local President Kenny Stuart asking me if I was interested in looking into a new SCBA system. What Kenny possibly doesn’t know is that in my current assignment as the Captain of Support Services, I receive several telephone calls per week from vendors wanting me to look at their “new” gadgets. So when Kenny called I was only luke-warm to the idea.  Kenny’s second telephone call was more in-depth and began to pique my interest. The IAFF was spearheading the drive to approve a revolutionary new high pressure SCBA system.  I agreed to travel back to Washington, D.C. and the IAFF Headquarters to be part of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) for this new device.  Once in Washington, I was introduced to Richard Duffy from the IAFF who runs the Occupational Health, Safety and Medicine section as an assistant to IAFF President Schaitberger.

Fourteen members representing Fire Departments from across the country were brought together to take part in the discussions as to how best bring this new technology to firefighters. Also in attendance were representatives from the Department of Homeland Security who have also become interested in this idea and have backed the program with several million dollars in grant funding. Stan Sanders and his team from Vulcore Industrial rounded out the people in attendance.

It seems that Stan Sanders and Sanders Industrial Design has invented and is nearing completion of the manufacturing process for a new high-pressure breathing air assembly that, when brought to market, will reduce the weight of the current state-of-the-art SCBA backpack by up to 60%! And that’s just the beginning. This low profile system spreads the new concept air cylinders across the upper and lower back with flexible connections between the bottles. This arrangement allows for the pack to bend in the middle increasing the comfort and safety of the wearer. The pack is only two inches deep, and made of space-age material that will not fragment if failure should occur, removing out the risk of high-speed flying shrapnel. The new material transfers much less heat, so bottles will not heat up as much when filled. This means reducing the need to “top off” the bottles when they cool. Because these units lay flat, a unit such as Air-9 could carry up to four times the number of replacement air packs without bulky bottle racks. The packs simply stack one on top of the other.

The plan, as it stands now, is for Sanders and Vulcore to produce and supply SCBA manufactures such as Scott and MSA with the new cylinders and leave the Mask and PASS device systems to the companies that have developed and proven that technology.

The next big hurdle for the high pressure vessel is to pass US Department of Transportation certification. The technology is so new that there are no current US regulations covering the certification. This portion of the process will be championed by the IAFF, DHS, and the people at Vulcore.

The ambitious fifteen month process is underway with a working prototype expected at the next TAC meeting scheduled for January 2009. After the next meeting, I hope to keep you current on the progress of this wonderful development.

Click here to see photos and a presentation of the prototype.