Best Flashlight for Firemen....

[nethiker]

I'm on a small rural dept. with few opportunities to do interior attack. That said, we generally make entry after ventilating the house and almost never enter an entirely smoke filled room. It's usually clearer and much cooler down low where you are for your search.

I carry a surefire U2 as my personal light. I have a traffic cone for the bezel that sees a fair amount of use and I can dial it down low for up close work and turn it up to make out rural address numbers. I would not take it interior. I stick with my Streamlight on the helmut and a clip-on for my coat. I don't have a hand free to carry another light.

 

[Timson]

The video illustrates a point very effectively.

Even in a relatively open environment with reasonable ambient light and relatively light smoke, navigation is difficult.....


The environments I spoke of were - Zero natural light, totally enclosed, thick black smoke from diesel/oil fires, temperatures of 700 - 900F, steam/water spray, lots of noise, very scary.
In that environment - forget a flashlight !


Utter respect to firefighters - Very special people. :rock:


Tim.

 

[pec50]

Did some burn house testing last year and found that the narrow beams were the most effective for cutting haze. The SL Survivor LED was not available at the time, but I found the UK Fire Eled helmet mount to be reasonably effective. Dense smoke was impossible for everything other than the infrared imaging camera and I look forward to the time when we have these as a common use HUD.

 

[clipse]

Did some burn house testing last year and found that the narrow beams were the most effective for cutting haze. The SL Survivor LED was not available at the time, but I found the UK Fire Eled helmet mount to be reasonably effective. Dense smoke was impossible for everything other than the infrared imaging camera and I look forward to the time when we have these as a common use HUD.

We have two themal imaging camera's and they rock.

 

[leprechaun414]

I have to agree with clipse. I have the same lights that he mentioned on my gear. I had a K Brightstar that was great but changed over to SL for their LEDs.
I think the best light for a fireman should be usefull for a range of uses. I think of the lights I use for Structure Fires, Rescue accidents, Marine rescues, Traffic, community assistance and yes you gotta have them just for fun. Anyone who has ever been in a live burn knows NO light goes through smoke unless its a light smoke condition.

 

[Gnufsh]

I've got a Survivor LED, and it does fairly well at smoke cutting (relative to other lights, with heavy enough smoke you won't see anything). In moderate smoke at training burns, it did at least as well as a SL litebox (alhough the spot was a bit smaller). The only issue was that it seemed to scatter more in steam because it had more blue in it (shorter wavelengths scatter easier). I replaced the LED with a SSC P4, and now it has much better throw and a nice warm tint (V0). I haven't tried it in a live burn yet (and our department gets very few actual fires). The right angle format is definately good for a firefighter, and the long runtime is great as well. My 3C pelican sabrelight just doms too fast.