Question about helemt colors in Maryland.

[firefightinirish217]

I have watched a couple of videos this week from a department in Maryland. What is the blue helmet designating that their companies have. I have noticed at least one firefighter in each company in the videos wearing a blue helmet. Is that their Paramedic/firefighters or is it used for something else.

[Trackhoe71]

Depending on what deaprtment(s) videos you watched, more than likely the personell wearing th blue helmets is usally a Lt.

[hwoods]

Well.........

Irish, it depends on what County you are looking at...... PG County has White for Officers, Blue for EMS, Black or Yellow for Firefighters, Red for Probies, and Orange for Observers.

Now, Go to Anne Arundel, Howard, Baltimore, and a couple of others: White for Chief Officers, Red for Captains, Blue for Lts, Yellow for FFs, and Black for EMS. A number of the more Rural Counties have White for Officers, Yellow or Black for FFs, and that's all....... Personally, I like White for Officers, Black for everyone else..........

[Eng34FF]

We are similar to Harve. White for officers, with different color tets or shields to designate different officers (White for Chiefs, Green for safety, Red for Captain, Blue for LT). Sgts have black helmets. FF's have either black or yellow. The only blue helmets I've seen are for EMTs, but they are not fire helmets.

[firefightinirish217]

Irish, it depends on what County you are looking at...... PG County has White for Officers, Blue for EMS, Black or Yellow for Firefighters, Red for Probies, and Orange for Observers.

Now, Go to Anne Arundel, Howard, Baltimore, and a couple of others: White for Chief Officers, Red for Captains, Blue for Lts, Yellow for FFs, and Black for EMS. A number of the more Rural Counties have White for Officers, Yellow or Black for FFs, and that's all....... Personally, I like White for Officers, Black for everyone else..........

Same here Harve, I think it should be white and black only as well. Several years ago when Dalton switched to 1010's from those usgly *** 660c's they asked us what color we wanted to go to, we all said black. Well, we all got yellow, except for FFIII's, they got red, and the Lt;s and Capt's got black. Thier reasoning? They said it made it better for fireground recognition. I asked, well if FDNY can do it with thosands of firefighters wearing black helmets, why in the hell should our department with less than 100 personnel split between three shifts have a problem? No answer of course. We got a new training chief in right before I left. He changed them to all black after I went to the USMC. Common sense finally pravailed, haha.

I'm guessing after reading you post it must have been a Lt., he was fighting fire as was the other one in a blue helmet. I would think a paramedic would be kept outside, of course, I may also assume too much.

[EngineCO38]

Blue helmets on officers? Haha, now I would love to see some of my LT's in blue helmets. Wouldn't they just look cute, ha! I know that I'm not from MD, but I can say that the helmet color for officers vs firefighters and captains vs lt's varies around here as well.

When working mutual aid it can become kinda difficult to figure out who is what rank. Ourselves and some of our closer mutual aid partners have kinda standardized. Atleast to a point where we know what helmet colors means within those dept's.

[Eng34FF]

Blue helmets on officers? Haha, now I would love to see some of my LT's in blue helmets. Wouldn't they just look cute, ha!

Give the the UN baby blue helmets and see what they think.

[tree68]

Can't speak much to MD, although my son's department there runs black for the line FFs.

Around here, white for chiefs is pretty much standard, but there are a few chiefs around with black helmets and white frontpieces.

Helmet colors for firefighters are all over the place, with no county-wide standard (the 44 VFDs all operate independently). One department might use yellow for all non-chiefs, another red, and yet another black. So even if a department does delineate rank by helmet color, at a mutual aid event that all goes out the window.

Blue usually denotes EMS, but we rarely see pure EMS in a helmet-required situation - at a fire, they'll usually be on the periphery. FD FF/EMT's will probably be in whatever helmet their department wears.

[backsteprescue123]

Montgomery County, MD is just as Harve described for PG.

At the vollie house we have : Chiefs- White, Captains- Red, Lt's- Yellow, Firemen- Black

At work- Chiefs- White, Captains and Lt's- Red, Engineers- Yellow, Firemen- Black

[hwoods]

And.............

I forgot to mention that we also have Firefighting Paramedics here too. They usually wear a helmet color designated for whatever Suppression rank that they hold. With Paramedic engines, everyone has to work, so the Medics get dirty sometimes.....

[stm250]

On the depts around here(WI) mostly its white for chief, red for capts, yellow for LT.,(also officers have a red background behind their shield on my dept) black for FFs, an blue for EMS but one dept uses all red an just changes colors of the back ground on their shield.