MSA M1 Telemetry to serve the firefighters and community of Sevilla
Helping to keep people safe has been a core part of MSA Safety’s mission for more than 100 years. Accordingly, the company is proud to have been selected by the Fire Brigade Bomberos Ayuntamiento Sevilla to help protect their team of firefighters. As part of Sevilla City Council’s investment, MSA will equip the team with all-new state-of-the-art equipment that includes 25 M1 Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) with telemetry capabilities and an integrated Control Module, and an MSA HUB.
Life-Changing Technology in Firefighting Use
To keep pace with the rapid changes on the fireground, firefighters today need more than just the minimum performance from their breathing apparatus. MSA, an industry leader in the design, development and manufacture of advanced safety solutions, has invested in software development to deliver integrated, connected, and user-friendly equipment with features that ensure it is part of an intuitive and integrated system. The M1 SCBA acts as a backbone that equips firefighters with all the innovative capabilities of safety technology. It represents an entirely new range of options in breathing apparatus technology at a configuration that’s right for every environment. Deploying this technology can speed-up rescue times and support a wearer working in very confined spaces, where flexibility is essential. All by offering an advanced and ergonomic system.
Improving Safety Through Telemetry
Firefighters who are trapped or lost in a building have usually less than a full air cylinder. From a time perspective, it is crucial to quickly locate separated team members. Under extremely difficult conditions, a delay of ten minutes can be critical. Therefore, a strong fireground accountability system needs to be in use that will let an incident commander be on track in real-time.
With the M1 ecosystem, telemetry and communication are now able to provide complete monitoring and transmission of data in real-time. The whole process is fast and simple. The relevant information is automatically transmitted by a firefighter wearing the M1 SCBA with M1 Control Module to the MSA HUB. From there, the data is transmitted to the MSA monitoring software installed on a tablet or laptop, supplying the incident commander with the data at the scene. The system provides bidirectional communication between Incident Commander and breathing apparatus wearers.
The M1 Control Module, with its full-colour, integrated digital display, increases awareness of individual firefighters in their environment by giving clear pressure and alarm indications. At the same time, the command has more reliable information about the evolving scene, remaining service time and alarms. And lastly, it can serve as a second set of eyes.
After the scene concludes, this technology provides stored historical scene data that can be viewed or aggregated to analyse and learn from, and inventory management insights.
User Experience
“The Fire Brigade of Seville city has selected MSA’s M1 SCBA enabled with Telemetry because we were looking for equipment able to communicate outside the scene the information about what happens on the fire scene, including air consumption of the SCBAs. The M1 SCBA perfectly meets our expectations in terms of ergonomics and comfort and easily became part of our team.
Regarding the telemetry system, it is completely new for our fire brigade. We must say that we have found the system easy to set up by our firefighters, and available with very intuitive software for the incident commander” says Luis Lopez Mateos, Extinction Chief at Sevilla Fire Brigade.
A significant example of MSA approach to user experience is cleanability. The padded harness of the M1 SCBA is made of material that is dust and water-repellent, components that simply can be disassembled and re-assembled. The entire SCBA can be fully flushed at the incident and is also above that, it is machine washable without disassembly.
