Eli5: why do firefighters wear oxygen masks when fighting a building fire, but often not in a wildfire? You’re still breathing in smoke…
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As a Wildland Firefighter, we simply don’t have any masks.
Fortunately we are outside with lots of oxygen available to us, and smoke will just rise to the sky.
However there are situations where the wind might not be in our favor and we can get smoked out, making it incredibly hard to breath and see. I’ve personally experienced situations like this in grass fires, and it’s hard on The lungs, but ideally, you want to be working the fire in such a way that you can avoid smoke inhalation.
In structural fires you’re in an enclosed area where the fire is sucking all the oxygen out of the air, hence the need for heavy oxygen tanks and masks, that just wouldn’t be ideal for all the walking and laborous tasks we have to do in wildfires, and if the wildfire is big enough to be sucking oxygen out of the air around you, then you wouldn’t even be there in the first place. Big fires require other methods of attack such as water bombers or back burning, but not ground personnel directly attacking it.
Edit: this is coming from central Canada, I’m sure other departments across the world have their own gear but this is my personal experience
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