Firefighter Breathing Air Codes Are Evolving. The Fire Service Must Help Shape Them.
October 7, 2026
Firefighter breathing air codes are evolving, and this discussion continues the question raised yesterday: If an air standpipe is part of the answer, what standards, safeguards, and continuing oversight are needed to ensure firefighters can depend on it?
Water has a standpipe. Why not air?
That question opened the This or That? discussion. It also explains why firefighter breathing-air systems need clear codes, dependable technical standards, and continuing oversight.
THIS: Continue relying on firefighters to carry replacement cylinders to remote operating areas.
THAT: Determine where building-supported air should bring a replenishable breathing-air supply closer to firefighters.
A Firefighter Air Replenishment System is the air standpipe. Permanently installed piping distributes breathing air to filling stations located throughout the building, allowing firefighters to refill cylinders closer to the point of operation.
The technology already exists. Code pathways already exist.
The next step is building a coordinated framework that determines where air standpipes are needed and ensures that firefighters can depend on them throughout the life of the building.
Building Growth is Outpacing Firefighter Breathing Air Supply
Buildings are expanding upward, outward, and underground. Firefighters are being asked to climb higher, travel deeper, search larger areas, and advance hose farther before reaching the point where the primary assignment begins.
A building covering hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of square feet creates an operational commitment that cannot be answered simply by adding more cylinders to a bottle brigade.
The question is not whether firefighters will move cylinders. They will do whatever the mission requires.
The real question is how much of the department’s capacity that commitment consumes and what remains available for search, fire attack, rescue, rapid intervention, accountability, relief, and rehabilitation.
The International Fire Code recognizes this burden. Its explanatory language for Appendix L describes bottle brigades as extraordinarily firefighter-intensive and identifies in-building breathing-air systems as a means of reducing the personnel committed to cylinder movement.
Moving air should not consume the firefighters needed to accomplish the reason they entered the building.
This is why the code framework must evolve alongside the buildings firefighters are expected to protect.
Firefighter Breathing Air Readiness Does Not End at Installation
Firefighter Air supports codes for breathing air systems for the same reason it supports sprinkler codes: critical infrastructure requires clear installation requirements, continuing oversight, and accountability for maintaining readiness.
The fire service does not assume that a water-based fire-protection system will remain dependable simply because it passed its initial acceptance test. Human error, neglected maintenance, equipment failure, and unmanaged impairments can compromise any technology. Sprinkler systems have failed for those reasons, yet the response has never been to abandon sprinkler protection. The response has been to require inspection, testing, maintenance, impairment management, and accountability throughout the life of the system.
Firefighter Air Replenishment Systems should be held to the same standard. No responsible code can promise that a system will never falter. A responsible code anticipates that possibility, establishes safeguards, assigns responsibility, and requires problems to be identified and corrected before firefighters must depend on the system. The possibility of failure is not an argument against FARS. It is the reason a strong, enforceable code framework is essential.
The Coalition supports that same discipline for firefighter breathing air: clear installation requirements, enforceable inspection, testing, and maintenance, and accountability for keeping the system ready when firefighters need it.
Sprinkler systems and firefighter breathing-air systems are not interchangeable. The principle is the same, however: installation alone does not guarantee continuing readiness.
Fire and building codes should establish where air standpipes are required. Appropriate technical standards should govern air quality, equipment compatibility, safe filling, system reliability, inspection, testing, maintenance, and impairment management.
The objective is not simply to install air infrastructure.
The objective is to ensure that firefighters can depend on it when the mission requires it.
Firefighter Breathing Air Needs More Than a Code Reference
During the 2026 NFPA 1 development process, participants questioned whether provisions originating in a plumbing-code appendix should serve as the principal technical framework for a firefighter breathing-air system.
That distinction matters.
The debate was not limited to whether firefighters need reliable air resupply inside large structures. It also addressed whether the referenced framework adequately covered current SCBA equipment and pressures, compressor safeguards, cylinder-filling operations, breathing-air quality, equipment compatibility, and continuing inspection, testing, and maintenance.
Those concerns should not be interpreted as a finding that every installed Firefighter Air Replenishment System is unsafe.
They point to a larger standards question: Which codes should determine where FARS are required, and which standards should govern their safety, reliability, and continuing operation?
The Firefighter Air Coalition supports a coordinated answer.
Fire and building codes should establish the installation requirement. Breathing-air and equipment standards should establish how the system safely performs. Inspection, testing, and maintenance requirements should sustain readiness throughout the system’s service life.
The Coalition supports NFPA 1989 as the appropriate technical home for FARS safeguards, coordinated with fire and building codes that establish where air standpipes are required.
That is the Coalition’s position. It is not a claim that the NFPA standards-development process has reached a final decision.
NFPA 1989 Work Is Underway
Firefighter Air Replenishment Systems are being considered as part of the NFPA 1989 standards-development process.
Official committee records identify a dedicated FARS task group working on comments concerning a proposed chapter. That work is meaningful because it places firefighter air replenishment within the breathing-air standards framework.
It should not be overstated.
The current work does not represent final approval, a nationwide installation mandate, or endorsement of a particular system. The standards process must be allowed to continue.
The Coalition supports that work because getting air closer to firefighters is only one part of the objective.
The system supplying that air must also be safe, compatible, maintained, and ready when firefighters need it.
Be Direct About NFPA 1
During the 2026 development process, the optional FARS annex was removed from NFPA 1.
The committee cited concerns involving inspection, testing, maintenance, long-term breathing-air quality, and the supporting evidence submitted to demonstrate firefighter-safety and operational benefits.
Those concerns deserve direct technical answers. They should not be ignored or minimized.
The committee also acknowledged that jurisdictions could continue requiring FARS through other published guidance. The removal of the optional annex was not a prohibition on the technology.
Appendix L remains available in the International Fire Code, subject to local adoption. Appendix F remains available in the Uniform Plumbing Code.
The NFPA 1 action did not automatically repeal local ordinances, prohibit new local requirements, or invalidate systems already installed and governed under applicable local codes.
The Coalition’s response is not to dismiss the decision.
It is to support a stronger and more complete standards framework while continuing to address the operational need that led communities to consider air standpipes in the first place.
Removing an annex does not remove the distance, staffing, and breathing-air challenges firefighters face inside modern buildings.
Fire Service Representation Must Carry Real Weight
Codes may determine where systems are required, and technical standards may determine how those systems perform. Neither process is complete without meaningful participation from the fire service.
Fire marshals already play a central role in code development, adoption, and enforcement. They should not have to represent operational needs in isolation.
Chiefs, command officers, company officers, instructors, and firefighters should provide the practical information needed to connect code language with fireground reality.
That participation must happen while requirements are being developed, assumptions are being challenged, and safeguards are being established, not after the final language has been handed to the people expected to make it work.
Engineers, code officials, equipment specialists, building professionals, and municipal leaders bring essential expertise. Fireground experience must carry equal weight when the discussion involves a resource firefighters will depend on inside an immediately dangerous atmosphere.
A floor plan can show square footage, stairways, access points, and fire-protection features. It cannot, by itself, show what the building will demand from crews advancing hose, searching for occupants, managing limited air, protecting a way out, and keeping enough companies available to sustain the incident.
The fire service must help answer the operational questions:
Where will firefighters be expected to operate?
What will it take to reach those locations?
How will replacement air reach the crews?
How many firefighters will be committed to supporting air logistics?
What other fireground assignments will be affected?
What system safeguards, maintenance requirements, and impairment procedures are necessary?
How will firefighters train on and operate the system safely?
The people expected to carry out the mission must help define what the mission requires.
Return to the Central Question
Standards development takes careful work. Air quality, compatibility, filling safety, maintenance, and reliability cannot be compromised.
But the standards process cannot become a reason to postpone the operational conversation while communities continue approving buildings measured in hundreds of thousands or millions of square feet.
How long can firefighters wait for a dependable replenishable air supply while buildings continue growing beyond the scale that traditional cylinder logistics were designed to support?
THIS: Continue assuming that additional firefighters can carry enough replacement cylinders far enough, for long enough, while every other critical fireground function remains staffed.
THAT: Determine where an air standpipe is needed, establish enforceable safeguards, and bring replenishable breathing air closer to the firefighters performing the mission.
The Coalition is not asking communities to choose between firefighter air and system safety.
The Coalition is advocating for a framework that delivers both.
Codes should establish where systems are needed. Technical standards should govern safe performance. Inspection, testing, and maintenance should sustain readiness. Fire-service experience should help shape every part of that framework.
Buildings should not be allowed to outgrow the discussion about how firefighters will protect them.
The Next Steps
Firefighter Air supports the continued development of strong, coordinated, and enforceable requirements for firefighter breathing-air systems.
The next steps should include:
Continuing the technical work within NFPA 1989
Maintaining viable installation pathways in fire and building codes
Addressing the concerns raised during the NFPA 1 process
Establishing clear inspection, testing, maintenance, and impairment requirements
Requiring meaningful fire-service participation
Documenting system performance and operational experience
Evaluating where the breadth, depth, height, or complexity of a building creates the need for an air standpipe
The goal is clear:
Dependable breathing air, backed by enforceable requirements, with firefighters available for the mission instead of consumed by the logistics of supporting it.
Follow the NFPA 1989 standards-development process.
Bring documented fireground needs into local code discussions.
Know the distance. Understand the demand. Help shape the requirements.
This article discusses codes, standards development, firefighter operations, and community planning. Model-code provisions apply only when adopted by the relevant jurisdiction. Proposed standards language should not be represented as final until the applicable standards-development process is complete.
