From the AEGIS e-Journal, Volume 4 Number 6, June 2001
EVAC•U8® Emergency Escape Smoke Hood Brookdale International Systems Retail price $69.95 (we bought 2 online to test for $125), 5 year service life 1-604-324-3822 http://www.evac-u8.com/ It has often been said that while a burglary can cause you harm a fire can put you out of business. Or kill you. Indeed, fire, along with automobile accidents, accidents, and medical emergencies, is one of the major preoccupations of protective work. Since it is the smoke that is liable to kill you in a fire, not the fire itself, smoke masks or hoods are very important to have if you are caught in a fire, and we intend to work our way through several different available devices. The Business and Security e-Journal, June 2001 7 There are two ways to classify these devices. One is by whether they are masks which fit on your face, or hoods that go over your head. The second is whether they filter the air, or contain their own air supply. In looking at filtering systems to evaluate, we have chosen to look only at systems that include the ability to deal with carbon monoxide, as well as particulates and other gases common to modern building fires. The EVAC•U8® Emergency Escape Smoke Hood is (as the name implies) a hood, and it uses a filtering mechanism. It is manufactured by Brookdale, a Canadian DuPont company. The device comes with a wall-mount, and is about the size of a can of soda, which means it is small enough to toss into your carry-on or attaché case when traveling, or your flight bag if you are a pilot, or your desk drawer at work, or the bug-out bag you keep next to your bed at the hotel. It is bright green with an orange top, making it visible in the day, and the bottom glows in the dark, which should make it more visible if the lights go out (and if you can see the bottom). The filtering mechanism starts with a fiber filter, followed by an activated carbon filter, followed by a Zeolite section which I suppose serves to take out moisture which might affect the following hopcalite catalytic carbon- monoxide-to-carbon-dioxide converter. The device is rather ingenious. You take off the top and pull out the transparent hood, which is made of heat-resistant Kapton® (another DuPont product). There is a mouthpiece, and a noseclip, so you only breath filtered air through your mouth. The hood goes over your entire head, with drawstrings to make it snug at your neck. When you exhale, the air is vented into the hood, producing enough positive pressure so that smoke can’t enter. The two of us who tried the hoods found them usable and breathable. Our testing was obviously non-scientific, in that we were not interested in verifying the lab reports available on what gases are filtered: We assume they are correct. Rather, we were interested in discovering whether the EVAC•U8 is practical to use in an emergency situation. While the unofficial (“Ok, you can, but we’ll deny you were ever here”) smoke house test we did (we couldn’t find any firefighters stupid enough to let us try them in a real fire) probably wouldn’t have killed us, it was close enough to the real thing that we are confident that we would be able to make our way down a smoke- filled stairwell in a hotel or building fire wearing the EVAC•U8, and, equally, that we could survive in a compressed smoke-filled plane. The Business and Security e-Journal, June 2001 8 7. Free-Subscription/Unsubscription Information •• The Business and Security e-Journal is supported and maintained by voluntary efforts. This publication is owned, published, and copyright © 2001 by The LUBRINCO Group Ltd., Inc., and Financial Examinations and Evaluations, Inc. It is edited jointly by L. 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Article Title, from the June 2001 Business and Security e-Journal (© 2001 BSEJ), to be found at http://www.lubrinco.com/ . The e-Journal is a forum for the exchange of information, ideas, operating styles, theories, and related topics for corporate managers who make decisions in areas of high risk typically outside the expertise available in- house, yet which have the potential to affect their company’s domestic and international bottom lines. Nothing appearing in the e-Journal should be construed as legal advice. The information provided is “general information,” not “specific advice.” The Business and Security e-Journal, June 2001 10 The solution to any problem is highly dependent upon the precise facts involved. Thus, before making any reliance upon anything said here, you should consult with an appropriately skilled professional. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily endorsed by the publisher, and may be presented to encourage a dialogue among subscribers. The publisher and any re-publisher cannot be held responsible for any loss incurred as a result of the application of any information published in the e-Journal. Please be safe, and be smart.