Three Levels Of Air Management

Our guest this week is Battalion Chief Ryan Eldridge, Blue Card Lead Instructor

Ryan Eldridge is a dedicated fire service professional with a career spanning over three decades. He began his journey in 1995 when he joined the Las Vegas Fire and Rescue Explorer Program. Directly out of high school, he worked for the Las Vegas Bureau of Land Management office as a wildland firefighter on a hand crew. From 1997 to 2002, he served as a reserve firefighter in Boulder City, Nev. Ryan joined Las Vegas Fire and Rescue as a firefighter in 2002. Throughout his career, he pursued further education and training, becoming an Honor Guard member in 2003 and serving as co-commander; an LVF&R Technical Rescue Team member in 2005; and a certified paramedic in 2006. He served as an Executive Board member for Local 1285 and chaired the EMS Committee for over 10 years. In 2014, Ryan was promoted to captain, serving Battalion 1 at Station 10. Ryan was promoted to battalion chief in January 2024 and serves LVF&R Battalion 10, B-Shift. He considers being a Blue Card lead instructor an honor and is proud to represent Big Al’s legacy. Ryan has been married for nearly 30 years and has two awesome young adult children.

We break down how firefighter air management actually works from a morning bottle check to the moment you decide it’s time to leave. Ryan shares practical ways to measure real SCBA work times and shows how company officers and incident commanders can build a rotation system that prevents low-air alarms inside IDLH.

• treating air management as a Mayday prevention skill
• starting the shift with maximum cylinder pressure and consistent SCBA checks
• setting clear low-air communication methods between firefighters and officers
• understanding personal air consumption and the round-trip ticket mindset
• running realistic air consumption drills and tracking amber-to-vibra time
• company officer ownership of crew air and exit timing
• IC tools like elapsed-time “pokes” and CAN reports to catch problems early
• using on-deck and three-deep layering to keep crews cycling safely
• reinforcing the rule that there is no harmless smoke

Download the Air Consumption Drill Here: https://bshifter.com/download/air-consumption-exercise/

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This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Bruncini Command Training Center in Phoenix, AZ on April 16, 2026

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