LION offers the best head-to-toe PPE solutions for firefighters, period. Put our products through hell, then provide us with your input. It’s the best way we know how to improve our LION firefighting gear — to let real first responders give it an on-the-job workout and then provide us with their insights. If you’d like to be considered for a wear trial, fill out the form provided on this page. You can look through the standard evaluation protocols for our different product lines below:
This Friday’s LION Fire Academy video will show you how to perform an Advanced Inspection on protective footwear to determine if additional inspection or testing is required, if repair is needed or if your helmet needs to be retired. It’ll also show how to perform an Advanced Cleaning of your protective footwear.
Members of both career and volunteer fire departments know that budgets have gotten tighter over the years, and often the training budget is one of the first areas to get reduced. What money left in the training budget seems to be reserved for the development and refreshing of basic skills, with officer development becoming a low priority. The good news is there are free, nationally recognized courses online, and any fire department member can take them.
The National Fire Academy (NFA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) both have online courses specifically for developing officers as leaders. With these courses you do not have to already be an officer to take them, which allows those striving to become an officer to start preparing to move up the ranks. The courses are also a great refresher for those who are already an officer by revisiting topics such as different management styles, how to improve communications, mentoring, and how to motivate your crew members. The courses offered by FEMA and NFA contain the fundamental ideas, theories, and skill builders every officer needs. Some of the courses are more in-depth and take more dedication, but the payoff is well worth it. The courses take anywhere from two hours to 14 hours to complete and none of them have to be done at one sitting, which allows for great flexibility.
I wrote the blog two weeks ago pertaining to some of the available schools around the State of Ohio; I was fortunate enough to attend one of them last week. I attended the Heavy Rescue class at Bowling Green State Fire School that has been held for the past 15+ years with many of the same instructors, but countless new tactics. JD Vasbinder from Columbus Ohio Heavy Rescue 16 is the lead instructor and developer of the program. Many problems were presented that involved semi-trucks, school buses, heavy equipment, vehicles in water, and heavy objects. Holmatro, Genesis, Paratech, and TNT are just a few of the vendors that provided their latest and greatest for us to use over the 4-day class. There were about 30 students from Canada, The U.S., and Austria in the class, working together in three groups. I am going to talk about some of the highlights in the class and what I feel are the most important items to pass along.
Less weight, faster-drying and increased comfort: That’s the isodri® difference.
When you’re wearing a SCBA and dragging a fully charged 1-3/4″ hose line, the last thing you need is your gear sucking up water and adding more weight to what you’re already lugging around. Because isodri® Protective Systems sheds water, you’re working lighter and more comfortably with LION turnouts.
And, how many times have you had to work in wet and clammy turnout gear because it hadn’t dried from an earlier run? Fire fighters wearing LION firefighter gear with isodri Protective Systems report their gear has been dry and comfortable in less than 30 minutes from their last run.
LION’s patented isodri system can greatly reduce the risk of scald burns by managing the moisture that can build up inside your turnout gear. It may not be a difference you can see, but it’s definitely a difference you can feel. Nobody else but LION can give you the benefits of isodri.
Check out our brand new video demonstrating the isodri difference that we debuted at last week’s 2013 FDIC Convention.
Learning your personal air consumption rate during routine fireground tasks is not difficult—but it can have an enormous impact on your safety and effectiveness in an environment that’s immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH). In fact, routine air-consumption drills may have the biggest “return on investment” of nearly all fireground training.
Over the years, the fire service has adopted several misleading terms with regard to SCBA use and air consumption. Example:referring to “30-minute bottles” or “45-minute bottles,” and referring to the end-of-service time indicator (EOSTI) as the “low-air alarm.” This confusion has created an air of mystery around SCBA and likely contributes to the overall miscalculation of air supply—which in turn can have drastic consequences when your life literally depends on it.
The bottom line: The way we define and think of air consumption must change if we want to endure the violent fire behavior conditions created by modern fuels, the constantly downsized staffing and the ever-increasing work demands placed on our people. And the best way we can do that is through regular, mandatory air-consumption drills.
Getting Started
Air-consumption drills should be a mandatory routine of every initial fire academy, recurrent training and whenever a firefighter has a significant body change, such as weight gain or loss, a medical illness or new medications that may impact performance. There are many psychological and physiological factors that can increase our air consumption while in an IDLH environment—and they are different for each of us. Air-consumption drills serve as a best practice for you to establish your own limitations through real experience, so you can better understand and control your air consumption during combat.
Are you going to the Fire Department Instructors Conference next week? Be sure to visit LION in booth 811 and BullEx in booths4520 and 14035, and the BullEx live fire demo area at booth 19000.
LION is excited to show off a number of new products and enhancements. We take pride in our industry-leading innovation, innovation with the goal of keeping you safer and more comfortable on the job. Stop by the booth to see our full head-to-toe PPE offering and feel the difference for yourself.
And, if you a female firefighter that would like to offer feedback on a new Ladies Fit Pant, we’d like to hear from you! If you’ll be at the LION booth on Friday, April, 26th from 11am -12:30 pm and willing to try on the pants, please respond by filling out this form. Thanks for helping us help you!
In partnership with WL GORE, LION is giving away 10 free pairs of our new Commander glove each day of the exhibition. You can sign up to win a pair by filling out this form. Winners will be announced at the conclusion of each day’s exhibit and we will get in touch with the winners for sizing and shipping information following the show.
LION is committed to delivering the most innovative and comfortable turnout gear on the market, providing firefighters with superior protection against the hazards they face and effective heat stress management in the range of environments they encounter. As part of this commitment, LION chooses CROSSTECH® and GORE® moisture barriers for all of its PPE products — turnout gear, boots, and gloves. In addition to exceeding the minimum requirements of the NFPA 1971 Standard, GORE® moisture barriers provide other valuable performance advantages, are field proven day after day, and are produced using proprietary technologies and processes unique to Gore.
In the rough and tumble world of fire fighting, the decorative brass eagle on your helmet can become damaged. Here’s how to replace it and keep your classic-style helmet looking great.
LION Fire Academy has a library of videos on how to maintain, inspect and repair LION products as well as our competitors’ gear. You can find more LION-specific product repair information here. Helmet doesn’t fit? Since no two heads are exactly alike, a new helmet will need to be adjusted to your head’s unique size and shape. LION’s nine-point configuration and Center of Gravity™ technologies give you the ability to custom-fit your helmet to your head — granting you greater comfort and protection. Watch the video here.
LION offers the best head-to-toe PPE solutions for firefighters, period. Put our products through hell, then provide us with your input. It’s the best way we know how to improve our LION firefighting gear — to let real first responders give it an on-the-job workout and then provide us with their insights. If you’d like to be considered for a wear trial, fill out the form provided on this page. You can look through the standard evaluation protocols for our different product lines below:
Are you going to the Fire Department Instructors Conference next week? Be sure to visit LION in booth 811 and BullEx in booths 4520 and 14035, and the BullEx live fire demo area at booth 19000.
Have a training session soon but don’t have the gear? Getting safe turnouts and other PPE is fast and easy at 
LION Connects
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